


if we knew, we'd give up

by lunchables



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Minor Character Death, Murder, Non-Graphic Violence, Pretty dark themes but mostly implied, Prison AU, References to Drugs, just kidding this is gonna be stressful for all parties involved, so slow burn it's not even funny, they write letters to each other isnt that cute
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-03
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:54:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 62,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24524980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lunchables/pseuds/lunchables
Summary: “Oh, that’s kind of fucked up.” James’ nose wrinkles in distaste. “She added Luthor?”“What?” Almost as soon as she asks, Lucy must already see the same thing he does on the page, because her contempt nearly mirrors his. “Oh, shit, she wasn’t on it last year. That’s a little… dense.”Kara looks up. “Who?”By the way Lucy and James’ eyes both flit up to look at her with equal expressions of apprehension, Kara knows the kind of affront she’s facing.“Lena Luthor?” Lucy repeats slowly.Kara shakes her head, still lost.Before today, she never knew her name.alternatively, a prison penpal au
Relationships: Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor
Comments: 320
Kudos: 1284





	1. the routine

**Author's Note:**

> hello thank you for coming
> 
> 1\. i wasn't gonna release this for a while but i decided to post this as a thank you to everyone who sent me proof on twitter of donations to blm causes and orgs, the current number is at $900 and i'm hoping to get it up to a $1k! so come check out the links on my twitter @vellanille to help support causes and get involved 
> 
> 2\. fair warning i'm not a law student and everything will just from my own research and talking to a friend studying law
> 
> 3\. not totally sure yet as to explicitly which dark themes i'll actually get around to addressing, but i'll add the necessary tags to the fic as it comes up and will always give a tw at the beginning of a chapter.  
> anyway without further ado, please enjoy and watch your step

_“If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition, the shadow — you are not understanding yourself.”_

_Bruce Lee, Tao of Jeet Kune Do_

[September, 2010]

Kara Danvers keeps her routine the way most people keep their closet.

That is to say, it’s perpetually a mess, and you’ll never find the same patterns twice, but the contents are always more or less the same. Organized chaos, careful disarray, whatever.

She always has a morning coffee, but it’s just a matter of when. Eventually. Some mornings she’s up by five am and out on the Eastern Trail by 5:30 for a run. When she comes home, she’ll scoop a messy dollop of Folger’s grounds into her single-serving Mr. Coffee pot to brew while she jumps in the shower. Other days she just about falls onto the cold vinyl floor as she drags herself out of bed a half hour shy of noon. In a slow, painful trek to the kitchen while blearily trying to remember which cupboard the coffee filters are kept in, this is the part where Kara will contemplate offering a twenty-buck incentive to one of her friends as coercion for delivering her a hot shot of espresso. She never does, can’t afford that kind of luxury of course, but she comes close most of these desperate mornings. A day where she sleeps in like that isn’t frequent, just once a week. On those days, Kara squeezes her run later in the evening, just after getting home from law review so she can pretend like she doesn’t have fifty new citations to get through for next week’s meeting.

Her favorite days, however, are ones like today, when she’s woken up around eight to an incessant pounding on the front door that emphasizes how much the hinges rattle and suggests how old this apartment really is. The routine she’s come to expect on a day like this means that the knocking is quickly followed by an aggravated shout through the walls from Kara’s roommate to get the door, and it means that when Kara does stumble out of bed, shirt hanging half-off her shoulder and drool still on her chin as she skids across the floor to the rickety metal door, it’s to find Alex standing on the other side.

“You have ten minutes to get dressed.”

Anticipating Kara’s whining, Alex holds up a tall cup of coffee with _Noonan's_ trademark signature emblazoned across the sleeve.

Kara seizes it eagerly, already popping off the lid to inhale the sweet aroma. “I’ll be ready in five.”

Twice a week when Alex doesn’t have to be at the hospital at the crack of dawn, she’ll pick Kara on her way into town to give her a ride to campus. They’re flexible with the routine. It’s not the same day every week, nor is it the same time that Alex shows up at her door each morning. Sometimes it’s eight, sometimes it’s eleven, Kara doesn’t log it down to the details. They never coordinate much about it, Alex rarely calls ahead, and Kara doesn’t mind the unannounced arrival of her sister. Kara never has a class earlier than two in the afternoon anyway. She just enjoys seeing her on a regular basis, and it’s been a long time since Kara’s been particular about the neat order of routine. The disorder, that’s her niche of reprieve. 

Law school’s got a habit of drilling that out of you.

Hopping out of her sleep shorts and peeling the first pair of chinos she finds on her floor, Kara manages to work together a somewhat presentable ensemble, only spilling a few drops of her latte in the process. Alex waits for her in the foyer, thumbs clicking across the keyboard of her Blackberry. Kara’s just spitting out a mouthful of toothpaste into the sink when she hears her sister call out for her.

“Hey, for movie night next week, I was thinking we’d go see that new Toy Story movie. You were obsessing over it a few months ago.”

Kara pops out into the hallway, leather messenger bag swinging around her shoulders as she hops into her Oxford shoes. “I thought it doesn’t come out ‘til the end of the month.”

“Yeah, hate to break it to you, but you’re already four weeks into the term.” Alex holds open the door, waiting for Kara to amble through. “So? Should I buy the tickets?”

“Oh, uh, sure.” 

“For… three people?”

“Yep, sounds good.”

“Is there maybe anyone you’d want to bring?”

Kara knows what she’s fishing for. She clears her throat, wiping the lens of her glasses against the corner lip of her cardigan before leading the way out into the narrow stairway. “Nah, all good. You, me, Kelly — perfect trio. Can’t wait.”

Alex doesn’t press.

Once downstairs, Kara slides into the backseat of the mid-2000’s Volvo waiting on the curb, careful not to slosh her coffee on her lap. 

In the driver’s seat, Kelly briefs a glance over the shoulder of her seat. “Six minutes today? Think that might be a new record for you.” 

Kara shrugs, licking off foam from her upper lip. “What can I say? You guys got me Noonan’s. It’d be a crime to not appreciate it this fresh.”

“Alex got it,” Kelly corrects just as Alex slips into the front seat, nose still buried in her phone.

“Okay, just bought the tickets. Next Friday at seven.”

Kara fishes her wallet from her slacks, peeking into the slip of bills. “How much do I owe you?”

Alex gives a dismissive wave. “Don’t worry about it.”

Kelly meets Kara’s eye in the rearview mirror, her eyebrows piqued with quiet amusement, to which Kara rolls her eyes. 

“Oh, don’t give me that look, you know we have an understanding.”

Alex finally looks up from her phone, glancing between the two of them. “Sorry, what?”

Kelly’s hand finds Alex’s mindlessly on the console between them as she pulls back out into traffic. “I was giving her grief for how you spoil her.”

Alex laughs before she shrugs, shooting a look over her shoulder at Kara. “Nah, Kara’s right, we’ve got terms.”

“When she gets charged for murder one day, she knows I’ll rep her for free,” Kara explains, and Alex nods succintly.

“When?” Kelly echoes amusedly.

“If.” Alex shrugs. “Same thing.”

“You two really aren’t good for my health,” Kelly mutters under her breath, pulling onto the highway.

Kara’s second coffee doesn’t come until right after her Penal State lecture.

It’s the one class she and James share together, and maybe that’s indicative as to why it’s one of her favorite classes, but in her defense, she has a fair good number of other reasons for it. One being that it’s her only elective course, and the fact that she _chose_ it just makes it all the more intriguing.

The other, more compelling reason is that Grant always gives the best assignments.

“You have any idea who you’re gonna pick?” James asks as they settle into one of the coffee tables by the window of the café, rolling up the sleeves of his button-down as he unfolds a packet of listed names. “I was thinking someone who’s in for a corporate scandal would be cool. They’d have some juicy stories to share, would make for a fun brief.”

“Fun, right.” Kara shakes her head with a smirk. She forgot to grab a stirrer from the bar, and so now she sticks her pinky in her coffee to swirl the milk around before shaking it off, hissing at the heat. “But, uh, I was thinking just someone in county would be interesting. Put a local spin on it, you know? Makes everything seem… closer. More relatable, somehow.”

James chuckles, leaning back languidly in his seat. “Fun and relatable, exactly what we expected out of criminal law.”

Before Kara can answer, hands clap down on her shoulders from behind and a wet smack of lips presses against her cheek. Just as quickly as Lucy comes into view, she drops into the third seat at the round table.

“Hey kids,” she says cheerfully, plucking James’ espresso from his hands. “How was Cat? I had a dream about her last night, woke up really missing that woman today.”

James swipes his drink back smoothly. “I doubt very much that she feels the same about you.”

“I was a star pupil, thank you.” Lucy goes for Kara’s instead, and she lets her. “Cat would’ve failed me if it meant having me for another term if my brilliance weren’t so unmatched.”

“You’re a narcissist.”

“You love me for it.”

“It was good,” Kara interrupts with a placating laugh, knowing how the pair of them can go on for hours if no one stops them. “She finally assigned us our final.”

“Oh shit, for real? The prisoner correspondence?” Lucy sits forward immediately, dropping Kara’s coffee back on the table, and the drink sloshes over the edges but Lucy pays it no mind. Realizing what the list in James’ hand is, Lucy scoots her seat closer to him to catch a look at the packet. “It’s about damn time. Last year she got us started the first week of classes. She cut you guys back nearly a month.”

“Yes, thank you for reminding us of the monumental load of work we have ahead of us.”

Lucy smacks James sqon the bicep, and she reaches over to flip the page herself. “Shush it. Okay, who are you two gonna go for? You better’ve been thinking about this, I’ve been telling you to look out for this for months. Ooh, Manchester? James, you always loved a good vigilante. Maxwell Lord, maybe? Oh, what about Indigo? Actually, well, maybe not her.”

James pulls back to shoot, confused. “Why?”

“An arms trafficker? You honestly think you’re hot shit enough to talk to someone that cool?”

“Come on, why wouldn’t I be?”

Lucy pulls a sarcastic, wide-eyed face. “Yeah, and next thing you’re gonna suggest writing to Russel Rogers. Now that’s a man way out of your depth.”

“You’re out of your mind if you think I’d hit up Rogers before Rama Khan. Now _he_ was the elaborate brains of that one.”

They continue to laugh and browse through Cat’s posted list of names, Kara merely enjoying the moment, relaxing back and sipping at her coffee as they discuss the pros and cons of everyone listed. She’s content just to observe, keeping up with their commentary and chewing over any ideas of her own for the assignment. The back of her mind is halfway elsewhere, lingering on her other classes.

Until.

“Oh, that’s kind of fucked up.” James’ nose wrinkles in distaste. “She added Luthor?”

“What?” Almost as soon as she asks, Lucy must already see the same thing he does on the page, because her contempt nearly mirrors his. “Oh, shit, she wasn’t on it last year. That’s a little… dense.”

Kara looks up. “Who?”

By the way Lucy and James’ eyes both flit up to look at her with equal expressions of apprehension, Kara knows the kind of affront she’s facing.

“Lena Luthor?” Lucy repeats slowly. 

Kara shakes her head, still lost.

Before today, she never knew her name.

“Tell me you’re joking. Kara, no way you got into this place on a full fucking ride without knowing about the Luthor family murders.”

Kara purses her lips, used to this sort of third-degree by now. Yes, she’s on a full-ride, but her upbringing wasn’t the most… traditional, and so she lacks a certain _conventional_ knowledge she’s apparently expected to have. It’s become a regular joke actually, a trivia debacle of questions to ask Kara Danvers, to try and see what supposed “common knowledge” facts she’s never heard of. 

Normally, it sticks in the realm of pop culture. General stuff, things about a Kardashian family, popular boy bands, the current culture of perfecting just the right kind of AIM status. It’s just a lot of general content Kara doesn’t understand, and never found the time to really look into. Rarely does it surface within the more academic topics.

“I’m just really charming, I guess.” Just as Kara thinks she’s not annoyed by the condescending tone, she wonders if she’s pretending even to herself. She shakes it off. “So, Lena Luthor? Who is she?”

James is the one to answer, brushing aside Lucy’s exaggerated shock. “She killed her entire family in ‘04. All three of them. Completely out of the blue, no record of violence in her rap. It was just kind of a hot mess, to be honest. Sort of a blood bath.”

No one can be expected to know every homicide ever, not even law students. Kara shrugs. “Okay. What’s the big deal, though? Is that really that much worse than Khan? He tried to bomb three major west-coast cities. He was charged with killing half a dozen families.”

“It’s not that she was super prolific,” Lucy says carefully. “I just mean, it’s a personal thing here.”

“Personal?”

James sighs, propping his elbows on the table, the list left forgotten. “Her dad was the last CDCR commissioner. Lionel Luthor? He started as a prison guard, got his LLM here at NCU, and eventually moved up to commissioner. He was known for curbing solitary confinement and reducing the state’s incarceration rates, which was huge considering Cali’s always been notorious for its inhumane prison system.”

“And, what, she just killed him?”

Lucy nods, stealing another sip of Kara’s coffee. “Yep. Along with her mom and brother. She just like, snapped, out of nowhere. All just because they were gonna send her to rehab.”

“That was in the official release?”

“No, I mean.” Lucy sticks her tongue against the inside of her cheek, sardonic. “Some friends testified against her or something, said she’d just been kicked out of her grad program — one of the other NCU schools actually, I think — for a drug problem the week before, got sent home, and one of them said the brother had mentioned sending her away on a ‘retreat.’ Which, you know, if you put two and two together.”

“So, gossip’s admissible to a jury now, is it?”

James gives a wry laugh. “So defensive for someone you didn’t know existed five minutes ago.”

Kara shifts in her seat, crossing her arms. “I’m just saying. I don’t get why you’re so quick to glamorize Manchester or Indigo like internet groupies, but suddenly interviewing this Lena person is absurd because — what, school pride? Is our criteria supposed to be based solely around finding someone whose crimes are unique but detached by enough degrees of separation so we can feel better about being fascinated with it? The assignment’s about exploring the range of criminal sanctions and penal institutions, to explain how the aims of sentencing relates to actual outcomes. So, yeah, sure, I’m defensive because I’m not afraid to interview someone so close to home. I think _that’s_ the kind of challenge that’ll make you stand out, not about whose story would make the best blockbuster.”

James and Lucy exchange raised-brow, stunned expressions in silence before looking back to her. But Kara doesn’t have enough time to feel the slippery humidity of embarrassment rise in her cheeks because Lucy is letting out a low whistle, and her mouth splits into a grin.

“Kara, I know you’ve always been one hell of a devil’s advocate, but seriously _._ Whoever you do pick, Cat’s gonna have a field day with your presentation.”

James eyebrows raise. “Come on, you’re not actually gonna go with her, are you? What happened to small-time county and relatable?”

Kara swallows, cocking her jaw. She wasn’t considering it at all, not really. Sure, violent crime has always been the focus of her specialty, but Kara has enough on her plate without having to worry about taking on what is clearly a sensitive case. But… now? Maybe out of a petty sort of spite, she almost wants to. She could see herself doing it, if only to stubbornly prove a point.

“What? You don’t think I can handle it?”

Lucy answers this one. “I mean, I don’t know if you could _keep_ her. She’s just not totally like the rest, you know? Doesn’t really seem the type to be much interested in a penpal.”

“Oh, really?” James laughs. “And how long have you two been so close?”

“Fuck you, Olsen.” Turning back to Kara, Lucy’s face evens out to something more serious. “Look, I’m just saying, I don’t think it’s worth jeopardizing your grade over. She’s a fascinating case, yeah, but you don’t know how much she’ll cooperate anyway. Grant only secures you the first correspondence, and the rest is up to you. And, trust me, Luthor’s a nutcase. Hot and brilliant, but insane.”

She swallows, crossing her arms. “What’d she plead, anyway?”

“Not guilty. Obviously.”

“And they charged her with?”

“First degree. Three counts.”

“First? What, she planned out three killings in just a few days home from school? You guys said it was a bloodbath. That hardly sounds premeditated.”

“I mean, when it’s all put together it kind of does.” Lucy seems to have claimed Kara’s coffee as her own, and this newfound unease twists enough in Kara’s stomach so that she finds she doesn’t care. “Shows she’s sloppy. She was young, had a drug problem. Hell, I wouldn’t know how to plan a clean kill either. Doesn’t mean she still didn’t plan it.”

“Young? How old was she?”

“Eighteen.”

“I thought she had just gotten kicked out of a grad program.”

“Oh, she did. Girl might be batshit crazy, but she was a certified genius.”

“Is,” Kara finds it necessary to correct. “She is a genius. She’s still alive.”

“Sure. But the whole thing was like two weeks after her birthday, so. Real shitty timing, if you ask me.”

“Why?” James asks. “State law says juveniles over sixteen are tried as adults for murder cases, anyway. Wouldn’t have made a difference if she’d done it sooner.” 

“I mean, yeah, she’d still be in for life, but—”

A fourth person clapping their hands on Lucy’s shoulder cuts off her words with a piercing yelp of terror, and Lucy spins around to punch Nia in the shoulder, who in turn just swings back with a brilliant laugh.

“Fuck you Nal, you scared the living shit out of me,” Lucy gasps, her hand falling back to her chest. “What’re you doing here? Thought you were at the labor info session.”

They drop the topic of Lena. Though her name still lingers in Kara’s mind throughout the ensuing conversation about a guest speaker for the talk Nia just attended, Lena Luthor has all but withdrawn into the faraway recesses of her mind by the end of the hour.

For now.

—

It’s the routine that saves you, keeps everyone going, stops the nightmare of reality from swallowing them all entirely.

It’s also what kills you.

“And what is it this time, Morgan?” Lena crosses her arms, leaned against the wall beside the door of the common area that the man now stands in, blocking its narrow entrance. “Crew workers, again? Or were the pigeons looking a bit shifty today?”

He shaved this morning. _Good,_ she thinks. She can make out the nic of a cut just under the dip of his chin. 

Edge levels her with a slanted, patronizing glare. “Don’t you have a chick flick to catch up on, or something?”

“Mm, thought I’d let Mrs. Hayworth finish up her Golden Girls marathon first. So?” Lena lifts a brow. “What perfectly convenient excuse have you conjured up for me?”

He rolls his eyes, his beady gaze flitting out to the mingling common room instead. The twinge of his jawline twitches, and Lena knows she’s already annoying him. _Even better,_ she thinks. _Keep going._

“Really, I’d love to hear it this time. You know how much I love your creative excuses. They only get better the more we do this.” 

“Luthor, you can either shut your trap and get back to playing your stupid little card games, or I can have Mendelson take you back to your cell for the rest of the day, and you can chat up the walls in there. Your choice.”

Lena purses her lips, holding her chin high. “We have a right to know.”

“I don’t have to tell you jackshit,” Edge snaps, an ugly curl to his bottom lip. “The yard’s closed today. You ask again and I’ll throw you on vacation.”

Lena’s teasing grit falls, the coy game now like dirt under her fingernails.

She knows he would. He’s done it before, over less.

Grumbling under her breath, Lena trudges back into the rec room and drops back into the creaking plastic chair she’d been in just moments before, scooping up her cards. Veronica looks up as she sits down.

“Well? What’d he say? Why can’t we go outside?”

Lena shakes her head. “They’re just being dicks for the sake of it. Probably just too lazy to run the searches today.”

“Searches for what?” an upbeat voice interrupts, and a slim blonde is scooting up to the table on a chair of her own — the one with the broken back, the one that if you lean back further than a thirty-degree angle you’d eat it on the cement floors, something everyone knows, and the exact reason no one ever sits in it in the first place. 

Though the woman’s expression is open and innocent, Lena looks at her with a loathing dread.

“Oh, sorry, hi.” She sticks her hand out to Lena unprompted, a friendly but firm move, her smile confident. “I’m Gayle.”

Veronica snorts without looking up from her hand, shaking her head. “She knows who you are, don’t worry.”

Gayle looks between the two of them, half-uncertain and mouth crooked like she’s unsure whether to laugh or not. “This is literally my first day here, I just finished my intake.”

She says it like this is some college orientation, a new job, a fresh start. 

Lena looks away, back down to her cards, and again. 

Veronica answers her. “Mhm, and bet your first page that she already knows what you’re in for.”

“My first… what?”

Lena sighs, dropping her hand down to her lap. “V, give it back. I need that one.”

“I didn’t take shit from you.”

Reaching quickly across, Lena grunts as she sits forward and plucks the right-most card from Veronica’s hand. She hums in triumph as she slips the Queen of Spades securely back into her own. 

Veronica shoots the new girl a smirk. “You see that? She’s got eyes everywhere. Trust me, she knows.”

Gayle can’t take a hint to shut up. “Sorry, what’s a page?”

“Stamps.” Lena clenches her jaw, reorganizing her cards by suit. “You get your first page of stamps when your first money order comes through and your mailing privileges process, and then you can trade it to buy whatever you want. Closest thing you’ll get to having cash. Don’t take the bet.”

“Uh, right. Cool. But, you’re joking, right? You don’t actually know who I am? Isn’t that all like, private?”

Veronica laughs, tapping a card face-down on the table and sliding it across. To Lena, she says, “Ashberg.” And then to Gayle, “Sweetheart, believe whatever you want, but nothing is private here. Not with this one, anyway. C’mon, just a strip of the page, lemme prove her genius.”

Lena picks up the card. Four of Hearts. She rolls her eyes again and slides an Ace of Clubs back. “Miranda.” 

Honestly, she hates when Veronica runs this cycle, hates when she pitches her like some fucking prophet, parades her around like a shiny not-so-secret weapon. Lena hates it almost as much as she hates the sour truth of what she says, how she hates knowing everything.

“Um, I mean… there’s really no way you—”

“Gayle Yael Marsh,” Lena says, a monotone, an empty rehearsal. ”You’re twenty-nine years old, from a nothing small-town in Idaho. You studied comp-sci in your undergrad at Carelton College and were accepted into a doctorate program at Carnegie Mellon, which you turned down. Since then you’ve been working IT for a virtual dating assistant platform in National City and selling skunk weed you buy online with bitcoin to high schoolers. You’re in for assault and armed robbery. You were nearly charged with manslaughter, but your partner signed a confession taking the blame at the last minute before your sentencing, and so. Here we are. You can pick up your first page from the commissary soon as your funds come into your account.”

“Dammit, Luthor.” Veronica slaps her cards down to the table, rattling the deck and causing Gayle to startle out of her trance. Lena stares back emptily. “You know I could’ve gotten at least five stamps out of her.”

Lena rolls her eyes, and she doesn’t look to Gayle again. 

This is the annoying part, the one that stretches on, a substantial part of why Lena hates when Veronica makes a show out of her. Gayle will be flustered, pissed, terrified, vehemently in denial. She’ll either make a scene and throw a fit, or she’ll conjure up some notion of rivalry, like they’re sitcom enemies and Lena would care enough to even think about Gayle again without needing to.

When it doesn’t come, Lena still gives no indication to her surprise.

“Oh. Okay,” Gayle says instead, her tone strangely level, no sign that Lena just completely laid her life bare like reciting a grocery list. “So, what would I need stamps for if I have funds in my account? What else would I use them for?”

Veronica, on the other hand, barks a loud enough laugh to draw the attention of the whole room, looking up to Lena with a grin as she points over. “Shit, I like her already.” 

“You always like the new ones.”

“Just when they’re pretty.”

Lena sighs, dropping her cards now that it seems she’s lost whatever sliver of Veronica's attention she’d had. “Another word of advice?” Lena looks to Gayle. “Don’t sleep with her.”

“Uh, wasn’t gonna.” 

At Veronica’s haughty grunt of offense, Lena finds herself cracking the barest hint of a smile, just the faint lilt of her mouth at the corner.

Gayle opens her mouth to reply, likely to repeat her question again, but before she can get another word in, Mrs. Hayworth is shuffling up to the table with the duct-taped remote in hand, holding it out to Lena. She’s not nearly as old as she gives the impression of with all these slow, elderly steps and her coarse, gravelly words. As far as Lena knows, she has no medical condition that’d indicate why she walks with such a crude, hunched backside, either. Lena’s pretty certain she’s faking it.

“Finished already?” Lena asks, tucking her cards into her breast pocket and standing from the table. “And how was Rose today?”

“Catty old bitch, like she is every time you ask.” 

Lena takes the remote coolly. “I can certainly see the appeal, then.” 

When Mrs. Hayworth makes no move to leave, continues to hover in front of Lena with a wobbling, clenched jaw and twitching lips, Lena finds whatever amusement she’d been clinging to slithering away.

She’d hoped that she’d forgotten, to be perfectly honest.

By the time Mrs. Hayworth manages to catch her eye, a knowing, tentative question in those quivering brown eyes, Lena knows. She’s almost got her mouth open to ask outright, but Lena knows better, is quicker, rots faster.

She pulls the front-most card out from her pocket, the Queen of Spades. 

It’s the routine that’s supposed to save you, to keep you going, stop this centrifugal motion of circling madness from spritzing your mind to a muddy vat of nothing.

“This would make an awfully cute addition to your collection,” Lena says, the forced melody of her words rehearsed and precise like a chorus. “Wouldn’t you agree?”

The childish way Mrs. Hayworth bites down on her lip, as if to hide her excitement and stifle her beaming smile, it’d be cute anywhere else. Hell, on any other day, Lena might still get that same kick of delight in making someone else’s day like this, in pleasing, in her own special, unique ability to satisfy despite the gray, monochrome world they live in.

The routine. It’s exactly what leads to the slaughter.

The interaction lasts less than ten seconds. She’s already gone, and Lena’s already made her way to the lopsided benches that sit in front of the TV and is clicking through the channels when Veronica drops beside her, soon followed by the pale blonde. Lena had almost forgotten about her, reduced her to nothing more than a figure in her peripheral, but she makes no sound to show her annoyance that she still lingers.

Veronica doesn’t share the same inclination for privacy. She grunts that the bench can only support two, and she jerks a thumb at one of the backless stools left disregarded to the side, another seat that most ignore. Gayle seems to take the order less like a snide dismissal and more as a helpful instruction. She’s practically _eager_ as she tugs the seat up closer beside them on Veronica’s side. Lena can’t decide if it annoys or depresses her.

Lena flips through the TV guide, searching for just about anything that catches her eye. The public TV always has the shittiest channels, and on a day like this, she’d almost rather take Edge up on his offer and just spend the rest of the day locked in her cell. At least there she has the upgraded cable package on her plastic-encased 13-inch screen. Here, it’s either 80’s sitcoms, country music videos, or sports newscast channels — none of which interest her much at all.

Veronica hands her two more cards, and Lena takes them with only a brief glance, a fluid motion. Three of Hearts and a Seven of Diamonds. “Last two. Shepherd and Danler.”

Lena lifts a brow. “Dakotah Danler? Again? I just saw her last week.”

Veronica shrugs. “And you saw Mrs. Hayworth three days ago, but you don’t hear me saying shit.”

“You know I told her that was the last time.”

“Sure, bet you did, just like you did the last three times.”

Grinding her teeth hard enough that she can practically hear the eroding enamel, Lena stuffs the two cards back into her pocket. She pulls out a different one, a Three of Clubs, and all but stuffs it into Veronica’s hands. She can see the other woman look up at her in confusion, the blurry peripheral of her raised eyebrows.

“And who’s this for?”

Lena doesn’t look away from the screen, having settled on ESPN. “You.”

“But I didn’t—”

“I know. It’s not that. They want to talk to you.”

When Lena turns back, Veronica’s eyes are cut like stone, just blank slates of nothing, and Lena looks away just as quickly. 

“Why? Why can’t you just talk to me?”

She bites back the sour urge to apologize. “I don’t know.”

Veronica laughs, a dark scoff. “We both know you can lie better than that.”

The mood has shifted palpably, and though Lena is used to disappointing others by now, the crisp edge of hostility rolling off of Veronica like waves of boiling heat makes Lena’s skin crawl all the same. 

Gayle doesn’t pick up on shit.

“What’s up with the cards? Are you playing something?” She leans forward on her elbows, as if trying to peak at the ones in Veronica’s hand, but Veronica stuffs them too quickly away into the pocket of her trousers for her to see. 

“Do yourself a favor, kid.” Though the teasing, amused tone has returned to Veronica’s tongue, Lena can still hear the bitter undertone, like mud caked to her gums. “Don’t ask Luthor any questions.”

“But you said she knows everything.”

Lena doesn’t blink, but she doesn’t see the newscasters on the screen either, too preoccupied wondering what it would take to have Veronica transferred to a different facility. Over a year’s worth of favors, at least. 

“Exactly,” Veronica says, kicking her feet up on the plastic coffee table. “That’s exactly why you don’t ask her.”

Lena paces down the hall, the thin rubber soles of her cheap sneakers smacking against the linoleum floors like a cartoon. God, she can already feel the scalding slip of humiliation and anger creeping up her neck, and that just fans it even hotter.

“Hey inmate,” a sharp voice barks from a branching hallway, and Lena’s fist clenches around the wooden pole in her hands as she lurches to a stop. “Where you think you’re going? It’s work ‘n leisure hours.” 

He’s one of the new ones. Queen, she’s pretty sure. From San Francisco, two kids. She turns towards him and catches his suspicious, narrowed eyes, but she most certainly doesn’t have the time or patience to assuage his newbie insecurities and work onto his good side.

She adopts the same tone her mother used to use when she wanted Lena to feel stupid, and she waves the mop in her hand aggravatedly. “What does it look like I’m doing?”

Her sharp retort catches him off guard. “Oh, are you — you one of the cleaners?”

“No, I use this thing to brush my teeth at night. Yes, I’m a cleaner, and Andrea Rojas doesn’t like to be kept waiting. Should I tell her you’re worried I plan to escape with a watered down spray of Windex, or can I go mop her floors now?”

The name-drop morphs his demeanor entirely, his cocky bravado slumping, and he rubs his chin. “No, uh, carry on.”

“ _Thank_ you.”

When she storms into Andrea’s office just a minute later, Lena drops the mop to the floor with a clatter and slams the door.

“Morning, Lena.”

“What is this shit?”

Andrea only now looks away from her computer monitor, a slight twist of amusement at the edge of her mouth, and she leans back in her leather seat. “What’s what?”

Her belt of cleaning supplies rattling on her hip, Lena stomps toward the desk and pulls out a wrinkled, yellow sheet of legal paper from her shirt, slapping it to the surface.

“Oh, have you picked up writing again?” Andrea asks with a sickeningly fake oblivious attitude. “I’m so glad.”

“I told you I didn’t want to talk to anyone.”

“Talk to who?”

“I don’t know, some daisy-ass law-student. I told you I didn’t want my name on any list. I’m not a damn zoo animal to marvel at, and I sure as hell have no interest in playing a dummy pawn for their amateur mock trials.”

Andrea smirks, a twinkle in her eye. “I believe it’s just called being a penpal, actually.”

“Well, whatever it is, call whoever your friend is back, because I’m not answering this.”

Andrea laughs, sitting forward and crossing her arms. “Do you know what my success rate is with telling someone like Cat Grant no?”

“I don’t care who she is, _I’m_ not afraid to tell you no.”

“Aw.” Andrea pouts. “You don’t need to make this personal, Lena.”

She can feel the slippery blush of irritation coming back up, the one emotion Lena’s never known how to hide very well, so she turns back again. She said her piece, she left the letter, whatever. It’s Andrea’s dumb mistake to deal with now.

She’s bent over to scoop the cheap mop off the floor when Andrea sighs behind her. “Okay, okay, just wait.”

Huffing, Lena stands straight, digging her blunt nails into the handle of the stick. 

“Just, sit down, please. At least pretend you have some semblance of respect for me, will you?”

If anyone else asked, she wouldn’t. 

But maybe it’s how Andrea asks at all, how she gives Lena agency in her choice.

She feels more like a child in the principal’s office than anything else. Lena leaves the mop against the wall and drops into one of the scratchy cushioned seats across the desk, crossing her arms. She considers admitting that Andrea is probably the only official in this facility that Lena has any respect for, but she bites it back. She wouldn’t want to give her the satisfaction. 

“Thank you.” Andrea gives a pleased nod and clasps her fingers together. “Now, I think you should write the student back.”

“I told you, I’m not gonna—”

“And I think you should actually take the time and read the letter,” Andrea interrupts. “If you had read through the whole thing, you would know they have no interest in asking you about your case, not a first-person account. Any of the details they want to know is already public record, and you’re hardly a more reliable source than any legal documents they can surely find. It’s not an interview.” 

“Then what? Why me, of all people in this place?”

“They just want to talk.”

“About what?”

“I don’t know, but.” Andrea taps at the crumpled letter firmly, just her index finger, the nail a deep, manicured red. “I imagine this will tell you.”

“Why are you pushing this?” Lena hates the high, vulnerable pitch that rises from her throat. The entire framework of being lectured makes Lena’s skin burn hotter, and she resists the urge to pull at the neck-front drop of her shirt. “Why do you want me to talk to them so badly?”

Andrea tilts her head, almost patronizing if Lena didn’t know her better. “You know how many others here would kill for someone to talk to?”

“Ironic word choice.”

“You’re not a zoo animal, and they’re not looking for one. I want you to talk to them because I want you to talk to _someone._ ”

“Oh, please, you can’t seriously expect me to spill my guts and feelings to a stranger on a piece of paper.”

“Talk about the book you read last week, talk about how you hate the sound of my voice, talk about the Reformation. I sincerely don’t care what you tell them, I just want you to say anything.”

“I have plenty of people I can bitch about my life to in here, thank you.”

“But not out there.”

Lena’s fingers twist into the fabric of her thigh, her mouth wired shut.

“Having someone from outside to talk to can bring you an enormous weight of relief. I know because I’ve seen it. It shows someone cares, someone is taking the time to listen to what you have to say and not just because you’re locked up in the same room together. It gives you just a little bit of a token of the outside world to hold on to while you’re in here, to keep you going.”

She makes it sound like Lena’s a recluse, like there is no one else. Lena wants to point out that she talks to Andrea, who presumably leaves this building every night and returns home to some chic little apartment with a pretty kitchen and a shiny bathroom. It’s probably full of assorted skincare products, her favorite floral body lotion and toothpaste. Roses, Lena’s pretty sure. Andrea always smells like roses. She probably has framed photographs on the walls, ones with real glass panes. She probably has real glass windows. She probably sleeps in loose, cotton shorts and light tank tops, cleans her face with Neutrogena wipes, listens to podcasts as she prepares for bed, drops bits of lavender essential oil into a diffuser to help her sleep smoothly at night. 

She probably has someone to sleep next to.

Lena would be lying if she said she doesn’t think about Andrea often, about what she wears when she isn’t here, about what her mouth would look like without the precise paint of lipstick coating it, hiding it.

It’s only human, really. Andrea’s the only person Lena has ever met in this place who doesn’t want something from her. It’s only natural that this would thus leave a sticky, shadowy imprint on the walls of Lena’s carefully organized mind, that she’s the person Lena’s thoughts wander towards when she can’t sleep at night. Andrea’s the perfect neutrality, a true indifference, someone that’s neither here nor there. 

Lena appreciates that.

It’s just an added bonus that she’s beautiful to look at.

“A token of the outside to hold onto,” Lena echoes, the words odd and clunky on her tongue. “That’s for someone who actually hopes they’ll see the outside again, isn’t it?”

Andrea’s eyes soften. This is their routine.

“For some. For you, maybe it can just serve as a reminder that a world still exists out there at all.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better? Knowing about a paradise that will always be just out of my reach?”

A laugh — a real one, a sweet thing, the corners of Andrea’s eyes crinkle, Lena adores it.

“No, Lena. It’d remind you that it isn’t a paradise out there at all, and you’re not as disconnected from the world as you think. You don’t have to be, anyway.”

It’s only now that Lena realizes how her foot taps against the floor, her knee bouncing, and she stops it now, self-conscious of how her pulse races under her skin like Andrea can hear it. She’s not even sure why, really. It’s just stupid Andrea, her stupid counselor. It’s just a stupid letter, just a stupid law-student.

She wants to say no, if only to wipe that pitying smile off of Andrea’s face. She wants to say no, if only to prove she doesn’t need some beacon of hope to live out her days. She’s Lena Luthor, for god’s sake, she can live her life on her own. She doesn’t need some stuck-up, snotty little grad student to tell her everything’s going to be okay.

So, when Lena snatches the letter from the desk irritably and stuffs it back in her pocket, rising jerkily to her feet with a clipped, _“I’ll think about it,”_ — no, Lena doesn’t know why.

But if it means a disruption to the routine, then maybe that’s enough.

—

[October, 2010]

There’s another prototype of the routine, another way that Kara gets her coffee.

The delicious steam of the fresh, dark roast washes under her nose first thing in the morning, and a blurry set of pale, gentle eyes greet her.

Kara scrubs her own eyes, arching into her bed. “Mm, morning.”

Mike bends down to drop a kiss on her forehead, setting the coffee on the nightstand. “I’ve got to head in and prep for a class, but there’s some waffles for you in the toaster. I’ll see you tonight?”

Still batting away the crumbs of sleep, Kara blinks blearily up at him. He always asks so many questions in the morning, always before her coffee. “Tonight?”

His mouth sets in the tilted, stiff sort of line when he’s pretending he’s not disappointed. “The _Chez Cassimir_? Dinner, with my parents. They’re really excited to meet you.”

“Right, right. Yes, yeah, of course. I’ll be there.” Kara shakes her head foggily, sitting up to bid him goodbye properly, to let him swoop down and drop a kiss on her mouth, though she’s still half-asleep when she hears the loud, telltale creak of the bathroom door opening.

It’s not even eight, and she was up the night before until one in the morning finishing her citations for tonight’s law review — which is honestly a generous hour to have been able to turn in by. She still has a couple more to get through today, and although she only has one class today, and could theoretically squeeze in another hour or two before facing the day, the shame creeps in. Kara pushes off the covers and drops her feet to the cold laminate floors, wincing at its briskness. 

This is normally the type of morning where Kara would sleep until noon, but Mike makes it a point to only come on nights where Kara can sleep in the next day, and she knows he only means to be mindful of her schedule. But something about him always being up so early, always on his perfectly-knit routine, it just makes her feel guilty more than anything, even if it’s not his intention.

The running water in the bathroom sink shuts off, and Mike reemerges, provoking another piercing creak from the door hinges.

“One of these days, I swear I’ll remember to bring my WD-40 and fix that for you.”

Kara shrugs, her feet brushing back and forth across the floor, letting the coolness stimulate her senses and wake her up. “It’s fine, I mostly tune it out now.”

“Still.” He shakes his head, buttoning up the cuffs of his sleeves. “It bugs me.”

She wants to say something like, _so stop coming here,_ but she worries he wouldn’t take it as the joke that it is, and it’s too early for another circling spat over semantics. She says nothing.

He’s nearly out the bedroom, leather satchel tucked over his shoulder and blazer draped neatly over his forearm, before he pauses, his free hand tapping against the door frame. “Oh, and I picked up your mail, by the way. Left it in the kitchen for you.”

She hums her thanks, dangling a last half-assed wave goodbye, though she’s not sure he even sees it. The front door clicks shut, and Kara sighs, finally reaching for her coffee.

She likes him, she does. He’s nice. Kind. Pays attention to the other things she likes, asks about her friends, her classes, her sister, her life. It’s just about all he does. It’s his favorite thing, listening. And talking. 

Maybe that’s what relationships are supposed to be like, though. Just a whole lot of talk.

Kara scrubs her face tiredly, not sure if it’s even about the sleep anymore, before she pushes off the mattress with a forceful shake of her head. 

It’s fine, he’s fine. More than fine, Kara thinks as she trudges for the bathroom and cycles mindlessly through her morning routine. He asked last week if she wanted to meet his parents, and though at first she’d choked on her toothpaste and nearly hacked up a lung, leading to him having to pound her on the back until she could breathe again, it gave her a brief moment to think. She mentally counted back the months they’d been seeing each other for, and — sure, okay, yes, six months is about a normal time to meet someone’s parents. She’s met everyone else, anyway. His friends, his mentor, the paralegal he used to intern for who occasionally invites him out for a beer now, the professor he collaborates with for his teaching fellowship. She’s met everyone.

He hasn’t met anyone. Her friends don’t even know that he exists, much less his name.

It’s complicated. She’s private, and he’s not, and it always seemed to bother Kara more than it bothers him — she apologizes preemptively for things he hasn’t even mentioned, and most of the time he assures her in good stride that it doesn’t upset him. Most of the time she believes him. 

Taking a heftier sip now that the coffee’s cooled down somewhat, and rolling the rich, creamy warmth around her tongue like she’s savoring a wine, Kara pads into the kitchen. It is nice, she has to admit, to have food and coffee made for her. Usually makes the early mornings worth it. 

Setting the mug down on the counter, ready to fish her waffles from the toaster, she isn’t paying attention to the pile of envelopes she’s set it on, and she’s too torn up with groggy, fleeting thoughts and distracted cravings to stop the spill in time. It clatters over, and though the mug doesn’t break, the contents splash across the counter, quickly leafing out over the surface and being absorbed by every scattered sheet of paper and consequently dripping over the edge to the floor.

“Dammit, dammit,” she hisses, spinning in circles for the paper towels, only to find the empty tube, which she then drops to the floor. “ _Dammit,_ Mike, I never leave the mail here.” 

She returns moments later with a used, dark hoodie from her laundry basket and uses it to soak up the mess, still cursing her own inattentiveness. Dabbing it across the wet surface, Kara quickly shuffles through the papers beneath it, mumbling under her breath for hope that none of it was too important.

This is how she finds it.

The ink of Kara’s name in a slanted, almost cursive print halfway bleeds across the envelope, the paper itself now translucent. 

The return address remains clear as day, untouched.

 _National City Correctional Facility._

She’s ripped the soggy thing open before she’s even given a thought to what it might say inside.

_National City, CA_

_September 30th, 2010_

_Miss Kara Danvers,_

_Thank you for reaching out. It sounds like an interesting assignment, to say the least._

_I suppose I’m not exactly sure what you’re looking for, or what you’ve been told. My life here is fairly conventional, ordinary. I live alone. I work as a cleaner. I read in my spare time. It’s about all things you’d expect, more or less, though the food is probably better than you think. I’m afraid I don’t know what else to tell you._

_So, let me rephrase: how can I help you?_

_Regards,_

_Lena Luthor_

That’s it.

Kara flips it over, holding the damp sheet up to the light like there’s more written somewhere obscured by the coffee, but she finds nothing. The corner of the page rips off wetly as Kara flips it back around too quickly, and in fear of damaging it even more, she drops it hastily back to the counter top, landing on the bunched hoodie.

If she had taken a moment to predict what it would say, to really, rationally think it through, it probably would have lived perfectly up to her expectations. Short, modest, formal. She dated it with a header like some kind of essay, for crying out loud. Still, there’s something on the brink of disappointment about it. Not that it’s anticlimactic exactly, but more a craving that’s barely been addressed, one that only nags stronger now that Kara’s had the barest of a taste, now that she has the concrete evidence in front of her that this is a real person, someone who wrote out her name and wrote out these words, meant for her and her only. 

It’s that same mystical feeling of observing a court in session and watching a prosecutor she admires deliver a ferocious, illuminating final statement like an actor on a stage conquering their soliloquy. It’s the feeling of when, just for a brief moment, not even a second, the lawyer turns and looks at her. It’s not intentional, just a sweep of their graze across the gallery, and they just happen to accidentally make eye contact with her. But it’s unfathomably grounding, a reminder that this isn’t a case Kara is reading at a desk in the library, a screen she’s watching from the couch in her home. It’s real, her unique experience and viewpoint, it’s a presence that can only be felt by _being_ somewhere you haven’t before, and that is _exhilarating._

Eyes combing eagerly over the page, back and forth, up and down, reading and re-reading, Kara wants to cling to that moment, that initial thrill of reality feeling closer than ever. 

It fades, of course. It doesn’t last, now that the letter has become too much a part of her world. It no longer is a token of someone else’s, a glimpse into another experience. The longer Kara stares at it, the more it belongs to her, and Kara has never had much interest in just having things. 

No, Kara is much more interested in discovering, and though she could explain it to no one else, in this moment she understands that Lena Luthor is absolutely a paragon of wonder yet to be explored.

She rips open a drawer for a pen and paper.


	2. the letters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everyone say thank u wendy bc she edits more than i do at this point
> 
> there was someone who commented on my other fic pmad a wicked long ago saying the fic reminded them of this poem by mary oliver and i just wanted to say this is a shoutout to you because i haven't stopped thinking about that poem since

_“Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine._

_Meanwhile the world goes on._

_Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain_

_are moving across the landscapes,_

_over the prairies and the deep trees,_

_the mountains and the rivers.”_

_Mary Oliver, Wild Geese_

_—_

[October, 2010]

_Hi Ms. Luthor,_

_I probably shouldn’t be admitting this to you, but I’m not really sure what I’m looking for either. I don’t know what kind of angle to take in this letter. I’ve already re-written it like five times already. I honestly just want to set the assignment aside, because the whole idea of it feels sort of distracting more than anything. You’re not an assignment I want to investigate, you’re a person. I’d rather just… get to know you, if that’s okay? Talk to you? I don’t know, maybe that’s weird._

_You know, as I sit down to write this (for the fifth time), I keep feeling the urge to find the most interesting way of portraying myself. I feel like I’m selling something to you. Which I guess I am, in a way? You have every right and opportunity to not answer me. This just feels like a commercial pitch that I should be applying some kind of marketing technique to, to make sure you actually want to reply to me. Maybe I should be. Maybe I shouldn’t be telling you all about my crazy thinking process on this strategy. I guess I would just rather you want to reply because of a real reason, and not because of some pretty illusion I’m painting myself as. Which, so far, it seems like the real deal is just me rambling for half a page that I’m nervous. I’m not even sure anymore if this is better than the last four drafts._

_You know what, okay, yikes. We’re just gonna move on._

_You’re a cleaner? My mom used to work as a maid at a few fancy hotels, and although I’m probably nowhere near your level of expertise, I’m a real pro at getting stains out thanks to her. The number of times I get a call from someone to come work out a wine spill on some white blanket or couch is insane, but I kind of love it — that that’s what I’m known for, I mean. What about you? Do you have some kind niche talent you pretend you’re not proud of?_

_Talk to you soon (I hope),_

_Kara Danvers_

_P.S. Is this weird for you too?_

“So, really, what’s with the yard stuff? My lawyer said we were gonna go out every day, but it’s been three weeks and I’ve been outside like, maybe four times.”

Elbow slumped on a mop, Lena finds herself staring out the window mindlessly. But she wasn’t thinking about the outdoors at all, just running over the words of the letter she’d read that morning, hearing the echo of her own voice reciting someone else’s script, playing it back in a different tone, trying to hear it how it was intended to be heard and not how Lena would morph it to sound like. The true, blessed curse of prose.

Gayle’s a pain, to say the least, but she’s not the worst person in the world to be stuck scouring bathrooms with. Lena wasn’t about to bash her skull against the cracking tiles when she found out Gayle was assigned to her cleaning shift, partly because she already knew it was coming. Ever since Edge mentioned that the cleaners were the lowest-staffed inmate position, she knew what it meant. They needed a filler, someone new, someone harmless, someone Lena could manage like an employee who is too naive to question what lay behind the office doors.

What they didn’t realize was that Gayle isn’t afraid to ask anything.

Blinking away her inattention, Lena stuffs the mop back into the bucket, sloshing it through the murky water. “Seventeen.”

Gayle looks over her shoulder from the toilet she’s scrubbing. “What?”

“You’ve been here seventeen days, not three weeks.”

“Uh, cool. Anyway.” The blonde wipes her brow with the back of her wrist. “You’re ignoring my question again.”

“Don’t touch your face when you do that.” Lena stuffs the scraggly mop head into the upper bucket, pulling at the lever to squeeze out the water with a loud squelch.

“Okay, see, that? I just want tips like that here and there, help me find my footing.”

“Didn’t realize general hygiene was such an insider secret.”

“Come on, I’m not asking you to spill a bunch of secrets about your friends. I just want to know when I can actually get a little sunshine. You might’ve mastered this pale, mysterious ghost complexion thing, and that works for you, but the second I lose my tan, I’ve got nothing left going for me.”

If Lena cared even at all, she’d feel a genuine concern about Gayle’s priorities. Lena wonders if Gayle even understands where they are, if she realizes how long her sentence is, knows the chances of it being reduced in a place like this. 

“This isn’t a singles cruise. No one comes here to make friends.” Lena sloshes the mop across the floor. “Maybe for a minute, you might think you’re friends with someone, but the second either one of you gets a one-up on the other, the girls here? They’ll always take it, and they will always kick you back to the bottom. Maybe once you’re out of here, it can be different, and you can reconnect later, but while you’re in here? Don’t trust anyone.”

“That’s like, unnecessarily specific, but okay. Will you tell me about the yard now?”

It’s not that Lena wants to hide anything. There’s nothing about this stupid yard-war she’s been fighting with the guards for over two years now that isn’t public knowledge, Lena just honestly doesn’t _feel_ like it.

But if it might shut Gayle up? Fine.

“They used to just close the yard for weather conditions. Storms, heat waves, whatever. Couple summers ago, there were some convicts from the men’s prison camp next door doing construction work between the double fences, upkeeping the grass. One of the girls inside shouted at one of them, and apparently that’s conspiracy, because now the yard’s closed anytime crews do work. Around Christmas that same year, five prisoners stole a trash truck and crashed the fences. Now it’s closed anytime any vehicles enter the prison. You get the idea.”

Gayle’s put her cleaning on pause apparently, because her head sticks out of the stall, watching Lena with a frown. “Dicks. What happened to them?”

“Four died. Killed in gunfire.”

“Ha. Talk about overkill.”

“That’s not funny.”

“What about the fifth?”

“Went on vacation. She did about two months down there.”

“Is that a sex joke?”

Lena finds herself laughing, even if she can feel the tic of her heart rate picking up just at the thought of it. She lifts her head from the floor to meet Gayle’s eye, her smile like elastic. “Vacation is what the guards call solitary. Sugar-coating helps them sleep at night.”

Lena already knows Gayle’s too fucking naive before the blonde’s eyebrows have even raised. 

She levels Lena with a droll look. “Oh, come on, no way she did two months. That can’t be legal.”

She wants to remind her that the very fact they’re both here is enough verification itself to know that the law will never be on their side.

But that’s not her place. That’s not what she’s paid for.

“They stagger it.” Lena clears her throat, turning back around to stick the mop into the grimy corners. “They can only do up to two weeks, but so long as you get twenty-two hours back out here in the regular routine, they can throw you back in.” 

“Damn, that sucks.”

Lena rolls her eyes.

“Have you ever been? What’s it like?”

Lena doesn’t let her knuckles clench around the wooden shaft, doesn’t listen to the pulse in her ears, doesn’t focus on anything but the ugly slush of the near-black mop wiping over the slick floors.

“Nothing. It’s like nothing.”

She doesn’t have to hear Gayle’s intake of breath to know she’s about to ask more questions, so Lena cuts her off before she can. 

“Get back to work. If I can do this all faster on my own, I’m getting you sent to electrical.”

—

_National City, CA_

_October 11th, 2010_

_Miss Kara Danvers,_

_At least you’re honest. Unless your disorganized musings are in and of themselves a strategy to make me like you, that is. I find both possibilities interesting, and I’m curious to find which one pans out. Yes, we can ignore your assignment if you’d like. I don’t have much of an opinion on the matter._

_And if this is something we’re going to continue, you might as well call me Lena._

_You should consider charging a fee for your services. Can’t say I work out too many wine stains myself, so I’ll leave that mastery title to you. As for “niche talents,” I suppose mine is that I have a good memory. I like to memorize things, recite them. Though that might be less of a talent and more just a testament to my eidetic storage capacity._

_I must say, I don’t know many people who share your aversion to distractions. You seem like you would like this idea:_

_“The only thing that consoles us from our miseries is distraction, yet that is the greatest of our wretchedness. Because that is what mainly prevents us from thinking about ourselves and leads us imperceptibly to damnation. Without it we should be bored, and boredom would force us to search for a firmer way out, but distraction entertains us and leads us imperceptibly to death.”_

_So, which is it? Do you prefer to be bored? Do you have no misery? Or are you avoiding death?_

_Regards,_

_Lena Luthor_

_P.S. Yes, it is._

“I’m sorry, you gave your home address to a _serial killer?_ Have you lost your fucking mind?”

“Technically not a serial killer. The killings would’ve had to take place in a span of at least a month.”

“James. Do me a favor.”

“Shutting up, yeah, got it.”

Kara stubbornly avoids Alex’s eye as she pokes her fork through the last scraps of her lo mein. Yeah, she half expected a reaction along these lines, but it doesn’t change her petty irritation and the urge to just ignore Alex until the subject gets dropped, like how they handled every sharp-toothed feud when they were kids.

But that’s not much of Alex’s style anymore.

“No, seriously, I want to know, honest to god: what the hell were you thinking? Were you even thinking at all?”

“Please, would you relax?” Kara drops the takeout carton to her lap, itchy with exasperation. “You really think Cat Grant would set us up to talk to anyone who could be dangerous?”

Lucy, slumped into the depths of the beanbag chair opposite Kara in the narrow living room, now waves her fork to catch their attention, and her next words come out garbled through her crab rangoon. “No, ye’, she to’lly would.”

Kara hardly has a right to call it a living room. Just a ten-foot long stretch of empty space that she squeezed in two folding beach chairs and an armchair she found on the street, along with a miniature ping pong set meant to serve as a coffee table in the center. Lucy always drags out the beanbag chair from Kara’s roommate’s room, claiming it as her own. Kara herself would be indicted for doing this, but inexplicably Siobhan is fine with it when Lucy’s involved.

Kara rolls back her shoulders stiffly. “Okay, well, Lena’s still not dangerous. So, that settles that.” 

“You don’t even know anything about her. For all any of us know, she could be some freak that’s already obsessed with you and is planning a breakout next week to kill you in your sleep.”

Lucy swallows the large ball of food, wiping her mouth. “Honestly, if she could pull that off, she deserves it. I’d let her do whatever she wants to me.” When James knocks her on the knee, she kicks him back with a grunt, cursing. “Ow, what? Have you seen her mugshot? You can’t tell me that that wouldn’t be a fine sight to die looking at.”

Alex’s face is buried in her hands, her index fingers pressing into her temples. “I swear to god, I’ll kick both of you out.”

To Kara’s left, James raises his hands. “I didn’t even do anything.”

“Y’know, it’s still Kara’s apartment,” Lucy points out.

“Alex co-signed my lease.” The box of lo mein gets abandoned on the pingpong table as Kara tucks her legs back into her chair. 

Lucy tears open a fortune cookie wrapper with her teeth and spits out a piece of plastic indignantly. “Dude, I’m trying to help you out here.”

Kara sighs, dragging her bottom lip through her teeth. All three of them are looking at her, and she can feel the telltale burn of self-conscious embarrassment crawling up her neck again. It’s times like this that she wishes Kelly were here, being the only other person in the world who knows how to curb this tyrannical authority-complex Alex thinks she has over Kara, the moments where she seems to forget that she doesn’t actually hold any kind of _ownership_ over her life.

She finds herself thinking about the quote from Lena’s letter now, the one that’s near-crumpled in Alex’s lap, the thing that started this whole debacle. She didn’t really get what it meant, or Lena’s questions. Even once she Googled it, finding it was from a sort of thoughts journal by an old French mathematician Blaise Pascal, it seemed to be more about Christianity and God than anything else. She scoured CliffsNotes and Wikipedia for anything introspective to say about the quote in her responding letter, but it’s proving an entire research project on its own thanks to Kara’s pitiful knowledge on any religious studies whatsoever.

It’s that kind of feeling Kara hates, that type of thing she prefers a distraction from. The patronizing tone, the dumbfounded look, the intentional mishap of forgetting everything else Kara knows and a decision to selectively focus on that which she doesn’t.

Like now.

“Alex does have a point,” James says, scratching his jaw. “Judge Keaton said I could use the court office’s address for my letters.”

“Well it’s already done, okay? Sorry I don’t have the time to stop by some P.O box every other day.”

While James grimaces down into his lap, pointedly avoiding her gaze, and Alex’s mouth falls into a flat, exasperated line, it’s Lucy who finally seems to take note of Kara’s bristling unease. Her eyes quickly dart across Kara’s face, taking note of her tensed forearms and seeing the way Kara’s huddled herself so deep into the cushions of her chair. Lucy just levels Kara with a sympathetic look, and Kara sees the soon grasp of relief just a moment away.

“Did I ever tell you guys I’m banned from Canada?” Lucy asks innocently, and all heads turn to her.

Lena Luthor forgotten, Alex and James stumble over their barrage of questions, mostly centered around concern and appalled bewilderment, which Lucy smiles through in easy stride, like being the center of attention in an interrogation is the definition of her comfort zone. Lips twisted into a smirk, she catches Kara’s eye, and the wink she flashes is enough to defuse any tension that remains in Kara’s shoulders.

A safe, convenient distraction.

—

_Hi Lena,_

_Is it working? Trying to make you like me, I mean. I’m kind of a people-pleaser. My sister says that’s my Achilles heel. But anyway, I guess the truth of my intentions is probably somewhere in the middle. My grand, masterful strategy is to be myself. So sorry to manipulate you this way._

_How good of a memory are we talking? Because I have an eight-page outline I need to have memorized by tomorrow afternoon and so far I have half the first page down. That’s close enough, right?_

_What kind of stuff do you memorize? Poems, philosophical stuff? I only guess that just because of the quote you sent me. I think I like the idea of what he’s saying, but it makes me uncomfortable at the same time, like I’m missing something, and so I probably might just not understand it well enough to really say anything super introspective about it._

_I used to memorize random fun facts when I was younger. I wasn’t always the best at socializing, and everyone else always seemed to just have things they could talk about forever, really in depth. Bands, musicals, art, books, sports. I didn’t really feel like an expert at anything, so I’d memorize all of these weird facts I could find online, in encyclopedias, documentaries at the library. I guess I just thought it made me seem like I knew a lot about something. Like, if I was so well-versed in this subject, I must be smart enough to know this obscure tidbit about it. I don’t know if that makes sense._

_I still feel like I should try to answer your questions. No, I really don’t like to be bored, otherwise I get restless. I know something about misery I guess, but just my own version of it, like anyone else. And I’m avoiding death every time I live, aren’t I? We all are? Maybe?_

_So yeah, to answer your question, I’m not sure. But if the assignment is the distraction, what does that make you? Boredom? Definitely not. Misery? Hardly. Death? You seem too sharp for that._

_I guess you just offer something else that Pascal failed to mention._

_Until next time,_

_Kara (just Kara)_

“And? How is she?”

“Annoying.”

Andrea’s lips spread into a smile like sunset, one that Lena follows so closely that she can’t imagine Andrea doesn’t notice her precise attention. Lena wonders what would excite her more: the idea that Andrea goes home to continue mulling over all of the ways Lena looked at her, or if every single thought of Lena ends right at her office doors, irrelevant. 

She does know, but she’ll pretend it’s at least an equal distribution. For the sake of routine.

“She seems to like you.”

Lena huffs. “No, Gayle just doesn’t know what’s good for her.”

Andrea lifts an eyebrow, teasing. “If you’re so all-knowing, then teach her.” 

Lena wants to say, _I want you to teach me._ She wants to say that she’s much more interested in being a student to her than to knock some common sense into a newbie that can’t tell her ass from her toilet cleaner. Lena wants to say this, even if it’s not quite true, even if she doesn’t so much as want it to be true, if only to catch that soft glimpse of familiarity in Andrea’s eyes, like the secret they share is worth anything.

Lena wants there to actually be a secret between them, one only the two of them know, just as much as she’s grateful every day that there isn’t. Supposedly.

“I’m not some tour-guide for the in-and-outs of prison life,” Lena finds herself saying. “She can figure it out for herself.”

“Is that what you did?” Andrea asks this like she knows the answer. For just a moment, Lena wonders what it would be like if she did. What it would be like if Andrea knew everything. How Lena’s jaw would unhinge and spill everything, how her shoulders would loosen, how Andrea could maybe come to understand her, in all of her ugly, sinful glory.

But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t even try, or she just wouldn’t want to. It doesn’t make a difference.

“Yes, I did,” Lena lies. “And nothing good ever comes to anyone who gets all the answers laid out for them. You have to realize I’m just doing her a favor.”

“Alright. What favor is that?”

“You can’t trust anyone here until you trust yourself. And if I help her, then she’ll think she doesn’t need to rely on herself first. So when I end up letting her down, she’ll have nothing, and it’ll be worse than where she started, and she’ll just come to blame me for it.”

Despite Lena’s gloomy wretchedness, Andrea gives an amused smile. “Do you trust anyone?”

It’s not instinctual, but it’s certainly immediate. “I trust you.”

“So, you must trust yourself, then?”

Again, it’s that same knowing glint in her eye that says Andrea knows more than she lets on, despite how impossible that would be. It’s a self-antagonistic loop, you see. If Andrea does know, then she’s not at all who Lena thought her to be. Lena trusts her, but the second she trusts her enough to tell her about everything, then that automatically, by default, invalidates her and Lena can no longer trust her. 

Lena also knows that Andrea is making fun of her just as much as she’s indulging her.

“Yes, enough.”

Andrea’s smile widens, and after a brief glance at the clock on the wall behind Lena, she sits forward, leaning onto her elbows. Her manicured fingers wrap around her forearm, splay across tan skin in a mesmerizing, artful way that Lena watches like she’s observing a performance. Which, maybe she is.

“How are things going with Kara?”

Lena thinks back to that morning, head hanging upside down over the edge of her bunk as she read Kara’s letter over for a sixth time. She can’t help it, really. Anything Lena reads, there’s an urge to memorize it, to carve it into the marrow of her bones to ensure she never forgets it. Maybe it’s because of how easy it is to do. It’s not so much that Lena is fascinated with what Kara says, but more so that they are words addressed to Lena at all. She reads plenty of things more intelligent or fascinating than anything Kara could ever tell her, worded much more eloquently, so nothing she says is particularly novel. Nor is it because Lena herself is the subject matter. There’s a plethora of written works out there, from speculative articles to fanatic blog posts, that go into great detail dissecting Lena’s life or even dedicating some perverted lifelong loyalty to her like she’s a hero. So, no, it’s not that Lena is intrigued about reading something about herself.

There’s just something unnervingly intimate about words written for the sole intention of being consumed by her. Sure, maybe a guard here or there will see it, but Kara doesn’t keep that in mind when she writes. Lena assumes she doesn’t, anyway. Lena can’t remember the last time someone put actual _thought_ into written words for her, not anyone since the frail, lopsided defense her lawyers put together for her.

Lena thinks about what Kara said, about pretending to be an expert at something for the sake of social experience. She thinks about how Kara didn’t pretend to know what she was talking about, about how she seemed much more adamant about ensuring Lena knew that Kara didn’t understand it at all.

Lena’s torn between not wanting to give Andrea the satisfaction in being right, versus wanting to share this all with her.

“She’s good,” Lena settles on, shifting in her seat slightly, her posture loosening. “She’s nice.”

— 

_National City, CA_

_October 22nd, 2010_

_Kara it is, then._

_I guess you’ll just have to figure out what it is I have to offer._

_Trust me, if it makes you uncomfortable, you understand it better than you think. I’m not sure if you’re religious or not, because I’m certainly not, but I was drawn to Pascal’s work for how strangely modern his writings feel. His thoughts from three centuries ago about a deity I don’t believe in sound applicable to feelings I have today. His words are familiar, and as much as I find that as discomforting as you do, it just as equally soothes me._

_There was a quantum physicist who said, "I think I can safely say that nobody understands Quantum Mechanics." That is to say, anyone who understands it knows that they don’t know the first thing about it. I still think he was talking about a fair bit more than just quantum mechanics, but maybe the point is that he knows to not speak on any other topic._

_Poems, yes, I’ve memorized a few, though I prefer prose. Books. To be frank, most poetry goes over my head. It feels like it’s supposed to be something that you should grow into understanding just by repeated, prolonged exposure, but I find the more I repeat a poem in my head, the more elusive its contents become. I prefer stories._

_It does make sense. Tell me one of these weird facts you memorized. Then tell me one about you._

_Regards,_

_Lena_

“Where’ve you been?”

Mike’s waiting for her when Kara shoulders into her apartment, half-past eleven, though it feels like it’s been far longer than 18 hours since she left this morning.

He doesn’t ask it like a demand or out of a possessive need to know her every move. He’s always been good about that, giving Kara her space, not pressing. It’s actually strange that he asks her this at all, now. He almost never tries to pick apart where she goes and what she does, never the specifics, like he knows that this would be the first thing to send Kara running. No, he normally asks for the gists of things, a blanket summary, things easily answered with statements like _just schoolwork_ or _meeting a friend_. He doesn’t ask for details, and Kara rarely offers them.

She knew he was coming tonight. Sort of. He’d texted this morning to ask if he could come over tonight, and she answered with a smiley-face emoticon. She hadn’t exactly expected he’d already be here, presumably having been let in by Siobhan, but, it’s whatever.

Arms tucked full of documents and sloppy manila folders, Kara kicks the door shut behind her. Mike immediately swoops forward to alleviate some of her load, and she thanks him quietly. 

“Just the library,” she answers with a slow exhale, swiping her bangs back from her eyes as she follows him into her room. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of Lena’s case docket.”

“I thought you were gonna wait to start researching that. Get to know her first, all that girl stuff.”

Kara raises her brow slightly at the comment but ignores it. “I know, but I just, I couldn’t stop _thinking_ about her, and then when I tried to get a hold of the file from the court and started having issues, I just kind of got sucked into it. Not like I got anywhere. I was emailing back and forth with different districts for hours, but they all kept directing me to someone else.”

Setting the stack of papers down on her desk, he turns back around with a frown. “Why different districts? It should just be the one she was tried in.”

“I know that, but their system kept crashing, and when I called they just forwarded me to Ventura county.”

“Ventura? Why?”

“Said they were cleaning up their systems and moved some of their files there.”

“Must be a mistake, National City should have it. Who’d you talk to there?”

“Just the office clerk. Matthew something.”

“Did you pull the Freedom of Information Act thing?”

She doesn’t think he does it on purpose, but often his attempts at being helpful come off more like he just wants to remind her that he has more experience than she does. “Of course I did.”

He hums curiously and swipes his thumb across the faint line of stubble there, contemplative. “You could always just go to the court directly. I’ve done that for case files I couldn’t find online or get faxed.”

Kara turns and shrugs off her coat. “Yeah, no way Alex would drive me all the way out there. And never mind the bus, that would take hours. I’ll just have to keep calling.”

“Well, I could take you. I can borrow my parents’ car for a weekend. Or, better yet, why don’t I just go for you?”

When she turns back around, rubbing a sore kink in her neck from being hunched over a desk most of the day, Mike has his arms crossed. He’s leaned back against the edge of her desk, the same glint in his eyes that he gets when he’s teaching. For a moment, it loosens something in Kara, and she smiles at the faraway contemplation in his gentle frown.

But she blinks it away. “No, I can’t ask you to do that.”

Mike stands, already shaking his head. “I have Saturday off, and you’ve got midterms coming up next week, so, yeah, I’ll go. Besides, Lenny used to work there. I’ll have him call ahead and make sure they know I’m coming so they can find it beforehand.”

It’s not until now that Kara realizes how long it’s been since she’s seen him. She can’t remember now. There’d been maybe one half-conscious, lazy night in bed together a few days after that awkward and stilted dinner with his parents. It wasn’t so much that she didn’t like them, or that they didn’t like her, but there was an understanding that seemed to pass through everyone at the table which felt an awful lot like Kara wasn’t the one who was supposed to be there.

She swallows, bites her lip. “You’d do that for me?”

“Yeah, ‘course I would. I know you’re just going to put all your energy into this until you get it. You’re stubborn like that. I’d rather you spend your weekend actually studying instead of obsessing over this case.”

She has a feeling, though entirely unfounded, that she’d do it either way.

Still. “Are you sure?”

Pushing off from the desk, Mike comes to cup her cheek, his thick fingers pressing just below her ear. He smells like campus, like the department of offices he prepares his lesson plans in. 

Distantly, Kara wonders how shameful it is to know that someone isn’t right for you in the long run, but to stay with them still. To know it will end, one day, and to pretend it won’t, just because of how it works for now.

His thumb brushes over her bottom lip, and Kara thinks that at the very least, she can love how it feels to be loved. 

“Yes, I’m sure. I’ll leave first thing Saturday.”

—

_Hi again,_

_Poetry also goes completely over my head if it makes you feel better. I always like the sound of words more than anything, but like you put it, I almost never get the gist of what it means without someone else explaining it to me. Then it’s kind of like, oh, how did I not see that before? It always seems so obvious, like how could I have looked at this work of art any other way._

_But worry not, I can promise you I would_ _never_ _pretend to understand quantum mechanics. But I can totally relate to not being able to claim total expertise on anything. Except wine stains. That’s about all I have going for me._

_I’ll tell you some facts, but I expect to hear some stuff in return. Namely what your favorite stories are. Can’t say I really have the time to be reading anything new, but I’ll make time. As for some facts, okay, off the top of my head, here were my favorite ones to tell:_

  * _Without food coloring, Coke would be green._


  * _Chimpanzees start their own fashion trends._
  * _The CIA headquarters has its own Starbucks._



_As for a fact about me, I thought that was what we were already doing, sharing facts about ourselves. But okay. Here is my entire personality in four bullet points:_

  * _I was home-schooled up until I left for college._


  * _I started my undergrad thinking I wanted to be a journalist._


  * _Sometimes I get scared I have no personality. That I’m boring. That I have nothing to offer. I get scared there’s nothing interesting about me, and I get scared I’ll never find something I’m really interested in._
  * _I like pineapple on my pizza._



_I sort of want to say that I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this. Then I think maybe I shouldn’t even admit that, should just take ownership of how I’m oversharing way too much right now. And then I realize it doesn’t really matter. I don’t know if it’s this idea of writing on paper and sending it off into the unknown, or if it’s something about how you make it seem like what I’m saying has actual meaning to it, but either way I find I want to tell you everything. What’s everything? I don’t know that either._

_Tell me a fact about you? Just something to make me feel less like an idiot. It can be a lie if you want._

_As usual,_

_Kara_

“Hey, what’s up with the cards?”

Lena looks over the trail of women still in line for their dinner, naming them off one by one in her head, searching. “What cards?”

“The ones you’re always carrying, the playing cards. You always have like, half a deck on you”

“I like magic tricks,” she answers distractedly.

“Oh, cool. Show me one?”

Lena looks only briefly at Gayle, who sits across the table from her with the same bewildered, transparent expression she’s worn since her very first day. “No.”

“Come on, seriously. What are they for?” Gayle laughs, a pathetic, superficial thing. “You’re not the only person I talk to, you know.” 

“Go bug someone else, then”

But Gayle only rolls her eyes. “God, you’re so fucking uptight all the time. I saw one of the other girls with a nice cuticle oil pen, and she told me to eat a bag of dicks when I asked about it. Do you know how I can get one?”

“No.”

“But you know everything. Do I use the stamps? Is that like the secret currency?”

Lena bites down on the inside of her cheek and shakes her head, still craning her neck to watch women shuffle through the double-doors. “No. They’re just stamps.”

“You said they’re like money.”

“For poker, favors, whatever.”

“Why stamps? Why not real money?”

“Does it look like you can just whip out your PayPal in here?”

“I thought you guys traded cigarettes, or something.”

“They stopped putting those in the commissary a few years ago.”

“What are the cards for?”

Lena waits a beat too long before she looks back to Gayle, listens too closely to the sudden, harsh thud in her chest, the one that disappears as quickly as it struck.

“Come on.” Gayle’s lips turn down in a wry smile. “I’m not stupid, and I literally made a living off cons and sales. Plus, you’d be surprised how much people will talk in front of me. Let their guard down. Really, I can help you.”

Lena raises an eyebrow, but she looks away this time. “For a new kid, you’re making a lot of dangerous presumptions.”

“Yeah, but I think you’ll let it slide. You like me.”

“You’re like a yeast infection that got left untreated for too long.”

She can still see from the corner of her eye how Gayle continues to look at her with tilted, slack-jawed wonder, and Lena can’t even fathom how an idiot like this could have made it in here. 

“So. Do you want to tell me about the cards, or should I go ask one of the guards? You’ve got one of them working for you, right? Which one is it? I’m sure they know more than you.”

Lena’s eye tears away from the line like the crack of a whip. “Tell me you don’t actually think that’s a threat to _me?”_

“I mean, probably—”

 _“Don’t_ talk to the guards. Ever.”

Gayle’s eyebrows crunch together, her plastic spork hovering over her tray, her challenging edge now tainted by uncertainty. “But… you talk to them.”

Lena laughs, a dark, volatile thing under her breath. “You don’t want to be anything like me.”

She doesn’t end up finding Veronica at lunch.

—

_National City, CA_

_October 31st, 2010_

_Hello Kara,_

_Do you celebrate Halloween? Or is it a holiday you enjoy? You seem like the type who would. If I’m right, happy belated-Halloween._

_The fact that neither of us understand poetry very well makes me want to explore it further. If your Achilles heel is pleasing everyone, then mine is probably a pathological need to know everything. It’s fairly annoying for most other people. The first poem that comes to mind is one by Mary Oliver called “Wild Geese.” There is absolutely something essential I am missing from it, but it reminds me of you, now that I think about it._

_That’s a loaded question. I like a lot of stories. Several come to mind. The last thing I read before I came here was Invisible Monsters by Chuck Palahniuk. If you get through that one then I’ll try telling you about something else._

_I actually knew about the chimpanzee one. My brother was very much a primate enthusiast, and he spent years studying veterinary biology._

_I couldn’t tell you much about what it is, but I can attest that you certainly have a personality. Your handwriting is unique enough. You’ve been a point of interest this last month. But I do know what you mean. I’ve always found myself struggling to not be honest on paper. As if my hand has a mind of its own. And then, of course, once it’s written out, it just seems very wrong to scrap the entire thing for the sole purpose of omitting a sentence I’m unsure about. Or perhaps that’s just laziness. I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I find this all easier to navigate when I think about how you’re no one to me. I don’t know if that makes me want to trust you, but at the very least it makes me want to talk to you. Is that worth anything?_

_Regards,_

_Lena_

_P.S. Fact: I’m absolutely terrified of squirrels._

[November, 2010]

“Damn, is that her signature?”

Kara jerks to sit up in her seat, her knee smacking against the bottom side of the table with a thud that echoes like a gunshot this deep in the library’s stacks. Still clutching the letter close to her chest, other hand rubbing sorely at her knee, Kara turns around to find Nia hunched over like she was just peeking over Kara’s shoulder.

“Hi.” She grins. “Can I see it?”

Kara lets out a thick sigh, dropping the letter face-down on the laminate desk. “No.”

“You could probably sell that, you know,” she says, rounding the desk to sit opposite her, her navy-blue Jansport backpack sliding off her arm and dropping to the floor. “There are definitely some weirdos out there that’d pay top-dollar.”

“You sound like Lucy.” Kara tucks the letter into the back of her Juvenile Law textbook, the one just about gathering dust sitting open in front of her for how much attention she’s paid it the last hour.

“Oh, don’t do me dirty like that.”

“Already did.”

“I’ll be sure to bill you for the psychological damage.”

“What are you doing here anyway? I thought you were helping Lucy set up for the party.”

Nia pulls out a textbook of her own and a spiral-bound notebook. “Yeah, I said I’d head over in an hour or two, just wanted to finish getting through these court transcripts for my torts class first. Think James is already there. Oh, hey, did he tell you? Apparently Leslie Willis first started learning to hack late in 2000 right after Sims first came out, all because she wanted unlimited simoleons. Isn’t that insane?”

Kara, leaning back in her seat and watching Nia thumb across her work, frowns. “She talks about that stuff with him? Her… offense?”

Nia’s head lifts back to look at her, tilted. “I mean, yeah, what else would they talk about?” Her frown pinches just a little sharper. “Why? What do you and Lena talk about?”

Poetry. Inadequacy. Quantum mechanics.

“You know, just.” Kara gives a vague sort of wave. “Prison life. Lunch.”

“Right.” She nods slowly, not quite like she doesn’t believe her, but more as if they’re having two separate, unparalleled conversations. “Have you read her file yet?”

“I haven’t exactly gotten around to it, no.”

“You really know how to keep us all in suspense. I heard the final prosecution statement against her was insane, the jury didn’t even take a day to sentence her. God, I can’t wait to hear what you think about it.”

Okay, yeah, Mike managed to pick up copies of all the court files on Lena’s case over a week ago; he practically left it on Kara’s doorstep with a shimmering red bow on top. It’s the embodiment of an insatiable itch, a curiosity that runs deep like glass under her veins until Kara can barely think about anything else. All of this word of mouth she’s been hearing about the case feels impossibly detached from the woman Kara’s been talking to, even this entire assignment feels like a separate endeavor, another life.

Kara doesn’t know what facade it is that she’s reluctant to break, but she does know that as soon as she opens that case file, a curtain will fall. Maybe it’s exactly the show she bought tickets for, but it doesn’t mean she’s ready just about yet to see half-hearted punchlines and trivial gossip manifested in cold, grisly print. 

Nia doesn’t seem to realize Kara doesn’t answer her. She just lets out a gentle exhale, turning back to her text. “But, let’s be honest. Trying to find something to talk about with Leslie Willis other than what she herself called the ‘genius corporate hack of the century’ is a wild goose chase. James would have better luck keeping Lucy sober tonight.”

Kara nods along with a hesitant smile. “Right, yeah. Wild geese. For sure.”

— 

_Hi Lena,_

_You’re really making me wish I paid more attention in my gen-eds. But I wouldn’t say that’s annoying, I think it’s cool how you’re intrigued by things you don’t understand. It’s better than the alternative, right? Who cares about someone who gives up every time they’re faced with the unknown? It’s a lot stronger to seek out, I think._

_Okay nice, I just ordered the book on my sister’s Ebay account. Don’t tell her, please and thank you._

_My sister actually wanted to be a veterinarian when we were kids. It would drive her nuts when I used to call them fur-doctors. Were you and your brother close?_

_Ha, I’m glad you think I have a personality even on paper. Even if it’s just for my terrible handwriting. So sorry for that, by the way. I do actually try to keep my hand steady for these though!! You’d probably be horrified if I just wrote to you normally. But yeah, I think that’s worth something. I want to talk to you, too. I honestly think it’s kinda cool we know nothing about each other. Little ironic how that just makes me want to know more._

_Anyway, it’s funny that the poem reminds you of me. The entire time I was reading it, it just made me think of you._

_As always,_

_Kara_

_P.S. I’m deathly terrified of pigeons, so it sounds like neither of us should ever make a trip to a major metropolitan park anytime soon._

Lena can afford to consistently have the max allowed capacity of her commissary account for probably the rest of her life. The inheritance she received two weeks before her arrest, though no longer in her name, was enough to retire an entire family. That kind of wealth combined with the gratuitous luck of that money being left instead to the one family friend left who doesn’t hate her and keeps her account well-stocked? Priceless.

Boredom, on the other hand, is not a luxury she can afford.

“How do you decide who to sell to?”

Sometimes it’s the decision of wanting to keep someone safe that is exactly what puts them in harm’s way.

Lena wipes a raggy cloth down the three-inch thick window, watching the elusive sunshine of the outdoors come into view as she swipes the bleariness of the suds away. It’s been over a week since they’ve been outside.

She ignores the question.

“What kind of stuff _do_ you sell? Don’t tell me it’s just cuticle pens and expensive tampons,” Gayle continues from behind her, and Lena can hear her squirt her own sanitizer bottle, can hear the slick sound of her cleaning down one of the tables. But it’s jerky, a back and forth, Lena doesn’t have to turn around to see.

“Circles,” Lena says. “Run the rag in circles for god’s sake. Not lines.”

There’s a pause, and then Lena can hear the familiar rhythm of the rag being wiped in the proper motion, and Lena just barely makes out her mumbled, _“eyes in the back of her fucking head.”_

The true fucking karmic cruelty about the routine is that it is the only thing that can bring you comfort. It is the only thing you can rely on to carry you through the indefinacy of damnation. The problem with that is how easily it can be disrupted. The problem with that is how devastating and disorienting it is when it does get disrupted. The problem is that Lena can forge a routine all she likes, and she can know every inch of this building, every person that walks in and out, the rap sheet of every inmate, the secrets that keep them sweating cold remorse at night — but she will never have agency over her own routine. Yes, she is the one who must summon the motivation and discipline to upkeep a routine, but she will never be the one to decide what the routine is. She will never be in control of its application.

“Are the cards a marketing thing? Like, this is what’s on sale, or this is what’s available kind of thing?”

She misses the sun.

Lena wonders how much of this she can chalk up to Gayle being a nosey nuisance, rather than Lena getting sloppy, comfortable, careless. How much is just Gayle being too intuitive for her own good. She wonders if they’ll believe her. She wonders if she believes herself.

It would be juicy and entertaining, anywhere else, to think about how they put Gayle on cleaning duty with Lena solely because they pegged her as too dim-witted to pay Lena too much attention, to catch on. It’d be damn satisfying to see how easily Gayle pokes into the holes of a carefully violent system older than either of them like it’s only a schoolyard game with fragile rules.

“Is that why there isn’t a single complete deck in this whole ass place? I’ve been trying to play go-fish for weeks.”

Despite herself, the corner of Lena’s mouth perks up into a smile, though thankfully, Gayle can’t see it. “Look for the green ones,” she answers. 

“Green? Where the hell am I gonna just find a green deck laying around?”

“Talk to Imra.”

“Who?”

“Imra Ardeen. Block D. Next time we’re out on the yard, for a page, she’ll give you the one she has on her.”

“A whole page? Seriously? Why can’t the commissary just sell them?”

How does Lena explain to her, without drawing on religious philosophers sacrificing their instinctual, animalistic natures to serve a god, that desire and ego will only lead to suffering? How does she explain that it’s necessary to abolish those impulses in order to serve _herself?_

Lena moves on to the next window, squeezes the trigger of her watered-down Windex, tries not to stare through the pane, not to the faraway texture of the trees just ten meters beyond the fence, not to the chainlinks that impede her view. 

“Imra buys them all out every time a new order comes in.”

“Why?”

“Having a monopoly on something in here isn’t the worst idea.”

“Sounds like a big, neon ‘fuck you.’”

“To who?”

“You. She’s cramping on your business.”

Lena could explain that she couldn’t care less who has cards out there, that they aren’t for her, that she doesn’t need them. She could explain that the cards are for everyone else, are in and of themselves useless, just an organized structure that the frail limitations of the human mind can rely on when it fails. She could explain the simple fact that Imra sticks to green, Lena sticks to red, and it boils down to a distinction as simple as that.

“I don’t have a business.”

“Okay, sure. But about the cards, she’d sell me a deck? Just like that? She won’t be wigged out that I’m some nobody?”

“It’s a deck of cards, not a weapons trade.”

“She’ll do it, then?”

Lena grits her teeth, swipes the cloth down again with a harder press. “Get someone who knows her to introduce you first if you’re so edgy about it.”

“Oh, perfect then. You know her.”

“Hardly.”

“You know everyone. C’mon dude, just help me out this once.”

“I am not your friend,” Lena bites, turning from the window, the liquid of the rag in her hand bleeding down her knuckles in her harsh grip. “You want someone to hold your hand and give you the lay of this place, go suck up to one of the mothers in here who will never see their kids again, because I can assure you that they are far more desperate for some helpless, needy child hanging onto their side than I am.”

Gayle stares back impassively, eyebrows raised like Lena has just pitched her latest idea for a floor-cleaning agent. And, again, Lena just wants to ask Gayle what is so _wrong_ with her that nothing about this place fazes her. Lena wants to ask why this frigid hell _excites_ her, why she is so eager to taste the poison that drips down these walls when all Lena is trying to do is turn her mouth away from it.

Gayle laughs, and it strums an echo of nausea in Lena’s gut. “I didn’t say anything about friends, and I’m not trying to become your bitch.”

Lena knows.

“I just think we can help each other. I know that girl you used to work with, the one you were with when I met you, I know she’s gone. I know you probably need someone else to fill her spot. If you help me now, then I’m good for it. I know I can do a lot for you.”

She knows Gayle can. It’s like Kara said, on the piece of paper tucked under a book on the makeshift shelf underneath her bed. There’s strength in seeking, in questioning. It’s the people like that who are strong enough to accomplish what needs to be done.

She just wishes Gayle had the common sense to be weak.

“Veronica hasn’t gone anywhere,” Lena says firmly. “And pretending you know what you’re talking about isn’t brave or clever, it just means you’re too stupid to know when to keep your hand to yourself.”

She thinks Gayle likes it when she snaps at her. The woman smiles. “You’re going to let me in, eventually.”

Lena bites her tongue.

“I know you haven’t told them about me, whoever it is you talk to, or I wouldn’t still be here. You would’ve taken care of me by now.”

“You watch too many movies.”

“Doesn’t mean I’m not right.”

—

_National City, CA_

_November 8th, 2010_

_Kara,_

_You know you’re the first person to ever ask me about him? Aside from if I killed him or not._

_I have to ask, you do know why I’m in here, don’t you?_

_Lena_

Kara worries she’s overstepped.

The succinct brevity of Lena’s letter, when the last month and a half of correspondence has been rich with fluid conversations and light musings, leaves Kara uneasy. Resting beside the other four letters, this last one stands out like a stark, desolate field in a countryside that’s been golden all year.

Okay. Maybe she’s overreacting.

Since their very first letters, they’ve never spoken about their circumstances. The nature of why they’re talking. Of course Kara knows what she’s in for. Of course Kara realizes she’s talking to a girl who allegedly murdered her family, and of course she understands she was given a life sentence. Kara knows all of this.

But maybe it is time to look beyond the naive avoidance of focusing solely on handwritten letters, maybe it’s unfair to both of them for Kara to pretend Lena’s circumstances aren’t exactly what they are. Maybe Kara’s childish evasion of the truth is becoming too clear on paper, maybe Lena finds it insulting. What Kara had originally thought of as polite and sincere very likely just comes across as patronizing and ignorant now.

No, it probably wasn’t about making Lena more comfortable with writing to some stranger law-student; it was completely about Kara pretending this isn’t an assignment, pretending this person she’s come to share her sandy, discombobulated thoughts with is just a faceless human mind who Kara can store some twisted loneliness in. Pretending she’s, at the very least, an imaginary figure of a friend. 

Maybe that was selfish. Maybe it was rude to pour this much energy into someone who never asked for it.

It’s just an assignment. This is just an assignment.

Pulling a thick manila folder from the bottom rack of her desk organizer, the various court proceedings Mike had picked up for her weeks ago, Kara takes a deep, soothing breath. It doesn’t do much, but she opens it anyway.

Immediately, the typed words printed across the top page jump out boldly from the text and every particle of air in her lungs stiffens to an arctic, piercing chill.

DOCKET NO. 2:04-CF-954088

DECEMBER TERM, 2004

UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT

FOR SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA DISTRICT,

COUNTY OF NATIONAL CITY

=============== 

LENA KIERAN LUTHOR,

Defendant

vs.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA,

Prosecutor.

===============

FEDERAL CASE

===============

Federal case.

She’s been writing to Lena for fifty-two days, and she has twenty-seven until the research paper due date. She hasn’t even started it, and she didn’t even realize it was a federal case. Of course she should've known, James was the one who told her that the Luthor father had been a CDCR commissioner.

Kara flips. _Part 1, page 3._ Pre-trial, arrest notes, arraignment. 

Intention to seek life sentence. 

_Part 2, page 12._ Guilt phase trial. Voir dire. Opening statements. Prosecution’s case. Defendant’s case. Closing statements.

 _Part 3, page 19._ Penalty Phase Trial.

Aggravating circumstances: three victims; one of three committed in heinous manner.

Mitigating circumstances: substance inebriation not considered to justify or excuse motive of offense.

 _Page 24._ Jury sentencing.

‘ _The jury deliberated over the course of seven hours. During that time it sent out only one note, which requested the “psychology reports” that had been admitted into evidence. Id., at 201a. These reports were provided, and the jury returned a sentence of life without parole.’_

Screw the assignment. 

Kara shuts the folder and grabs for a pen and paper.

— 

_Hi Lena,_

_I know what the reports say, yes. I didn’t want to assume anything, but I realize that might have been a tone-deaf thing for me to ask. I’m sorry._

_I say the wrong thing a lot. It’s like my party trick. I guess I just struggle to read your “tone” through writing, if that makes sense. And, so, at risk of sounding like a complete moron… I was wondering if I can call you? Or I guess, would you want to call me? I’m sorry if that’s weird. I’m pretty sure it is. But since you’re still writing to me after all this time, you might be as weird as I am. So would you want to? I think it could be an easier way to communicate, and I think I’d be better at these social cue things if I heard your voice._

_I know you can’t make collect calls to a cell phone, and I disconnected my landline like after two months of having it. So if the answer is yes, let me know, and I can renew the plan._

_But again, if I’m being ridiculous, feel free to trash this letter. Honestly we can just pretend I didn’t even send this at all. Better yet, I’ll just say right now that this is not Kara Danvers. I am an imposter making this silly proposition. Please disregard. (If you want to.)_

_As always,_

_Kara (maybe)_

“How do you keep track of everything?”

Lena doesn’t open her eyes, just basks in the heavy heat of the sun against her eyelids, her face, weighing on her clothes. This is the fourth time they’ve been out this week, and like fuel that finally restores a system that had been barely chugging along before, the fresh air is a revival. An elixir of relief. The pure elation of lying down across the top row of the bleachers outweighs any of Lena’s weary reservations towards the sick implements of routine. No, she’s never said anything bad about a routine. This is wonderful. 

“I remember it,” Lena answers simply.

Something about this liquid warmth just spills everything else away. All the dark fascinations and morbid mullings seem forgotten out here. The questions rest, retreat somewhere else for another time’s contemplation.

Questions like: what the fuck does Kara want to call her for?

The metal bleachers creak beneath them as Gayle moves down, sitting one row lower.

“You don’t write anything down?”

“No.”

“Well, can I write it down?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not some damn protegé learning a trade. You’re not getting involved.”

“C’mon, you know I’d make the best bookkeeper.”

Lena peaks an eye open, squinting as a slow, lucid smile pulls her mouth. “The fact that you think there’s a book to keep at all tells me everything I need to know.”

When Gayle says nothing, Lena closes her eyes again. The pause is filled only by the tendrils of wind, faint through the chatter of the yard, the dribble of balls on the court, the crunch of feet across gravel, the distant shouts of triumph or defeat over games at the picnic tables. Lena can practically see it all, a perfect diagram, a reliable map.

Recharge.

“Okay, but seriously, it’s one thing to know what each card means, but then you’re gonna tell me that you just _remember_ what goes to who?”

“If you keep talking this loudly about it, then you’ll definitely be put on vacation by the end of the week.”

“Oh, whatever, it’s just Edge on this side of the yard.”

Lena only opens her eyes, watches the wash of cotton clouds drift across the rich, cerulean sky.

“He’s one of yours, isn’t he?” Gayle asks. 

It’s sweet, the idea of it. That Gayle thinks so highly of her to imagine Lena’s made a monopoly of this prison, that her position is based on a stool of power rather than being pressed into a corner beneath one. 

Veronica didn’t ask this many questions in the beginning. Though Lena supposes she always was more in the business of assumptions and would fight with the corrections later. Funny, the one thing Veronica resented Lena for the most was the one time she was actually honest with her.

“You don’t want him to know about you,” Lena settles on. “Take my word for it.”

“Yeah, whatever, I trust you.”

Despite herself, Lena smirks. This sun really is intoxicating. “I thought I told you not to trust anyone.”

“I assumed you were the exception to that.”

Lena chuckles, draping her forearm across her face, a moment of shade. “No. I’m the precedent for it.”

—

_National City, CA_

_November 19th, 2010_

_Buy the plan._

_Lena_

Kara’s routine has ironed itself out, regularized. 

The postman swings by 147 Quint Ave as early as 8:30 on weekdays, though his average time has been 8:21. This means Kara squirms out of bed just five minutes shy of eight, and after some disorientation, struggling with the sheets, she manages to stumble into the kitchen and get the coffee started. She’s moved past the secondary (and tertiary) snooze alarms, even if it means that she’s blindly, sluggishly following an automatic path as she drops a coarse filter into the plastic chamber above the pot and scoops four spoonfuls of Folgers coffee inside. Sometimes she falls asleep slumped over the kitchen counter, still standing for the most part, and it’s not until the toaster springs out her waffles with a startling pop that she wakes again. By this time, the coffee is ready. 

About four mornings of the week now, Kara pours out two streams of the steaming, aromatic coffee: one into the chipped tourist mug from Midvale, and another into a cheap styrofoam to-go. Splashing in a large dollop of hazelnut Coffee-mate creamer into the mug and only a teaspoon of plain sugar into the cup, Kara squeezes on a plastic lid and snatches a waffle from the toaster. She stuffs this in her mouth, and with only some finagling, she kicks the front door open and shuffles down the crooked, steep four flights.

Still in her slippers, when Kara steps into the narrow lobby, the postman is already there, and Kara wakes up exponentially quicker.

“Morning Kennedy,” she mumbles through the waffle as she approaches, and he gives her a tired look. He alleviates the to-go cup from her, and she rips a bite out of the crisp waffle. 

“Y’know, bribery won’t make your mail come any faster,” he tells her.

Kara smiles, washing down her swallow with a sip of her coffee. “I’m not bribing, I’m being a good neighbor.”

“Uh-huh. So you’re not here to ask me if I’ve got anything for you?”

She knows it’s kind of ridiculous, especially when she comes down just a day or two after having sent Lena a letter, but in her defense, if something went wrong and the letter got sent back, she’d want to straighten out the issue and take care of it straight away. If there was any kind of delay from the usual rate that Kara replies, then Lena might—

Well. She might not care at all. Or even notice. Kara wouldn’t know.

But still. _She’d_ care.

“I mean.” Kara’s lips turn down in an innocent, contemplative expression. “Since I’m already here…”

Shaking his head, Kennedy thumbs through the envelopes in his satchel and plucks out a long, familiar banker’s envelope, and Kara’s already snatching it from his hand before he’s even properly extended it to her.

She presses her mug into his empty hand. “Hold this, please.” 

“Yeah, sure, I’ve all the time in the world. Y’know, if you really wanna see some expediting, throw in one of those waffles and I’ll be sure to hustle for you.”

“Ha. Keep dreaming.” Stuffing said waffle back in her teeth, she sticks her index finger under the corner of the envelope and, tearing the paper open, pulls out the sheet inside. At first glance, just seeing how there’s only one line of text written, her stomach drops to her slippers. She knows it’s over, that she’s ruined it, that she overstepped one too many times, that she was being ridiculous, that she still _is_ for being this disappointed.

But.

_Buy the plan._

She reads it several times before it sinks in.

“She said yes,” Kara mumbles.

“Huh? Kid, I’ve got places to be.”

“She said yes!” Kara exclaims louder this time, tearing the waffle from her mouth with a giddy excitement and just about jumping on the balls of her feet. “Oh, Kennedy, this might just be the last time you have to put up with me.”

“Uh-huh. Here’s your coffee.” 

“Can you stay just a few minutes?” She stuffs the letter under her arm and jerks her head in a nod behind her. “I want to send something back out, I can be back down in like three seconds.”

But he’s already re-locking the panel of mailboxes in the wall. “Yeah, have a good day Miss.”

“That’s okay!” she calls after him cheerily. “I can stop by the post office on my way to class!”

Kennedy gives a lazy wave over his shoulder just before the lobby door clicks shut behind him, leaving Kara alone with a half-eaten waffle, her Midvale mug, and a crumpled letter stuffed into her armpit.

She waits until she’s back in her apartment and sets the coffee down to fist-pump the air.

— 

_Hi,_

_871-555-0923_

_I’ll wait for your call ☺_

_Kara_

Lena waits a few days.

The first day she gets the letter, she gets so far as the front of the line to the payphone on the white-painted brick wall, watches Mariola in front of her finishing up her call, and knows she’s next. 

Mariola, a middle-aged Dominican woman from South Florida. Moved to National City in the early 90’s. Clean record — not even a speeding ticket — up until ‘97 when she picked up a seven-year-old boy at a Chuck E. Cheese and held him in her studio apartment for two months. She was caught when she fed him a peanut butter sandwich and he went into anaphylactic shock, forced to take him to the hospital. 

Lena’s next in line, but Edge passes by.

“Since when do you make calls, Luthor?” he asks with a gravelly laugh, like both the bait and the punchline of a tired joke. “Someone out there actually answers the phone to you?” 

He’s in a good mood today. His grin is cocky, slanted, one hand tucked into the pocket of his dark slacks, the other resting loosely on his gun holster. That’s his default stance, his instinctual form, like a predictable cartoon character. He’s always like this on the days of their trade-offs, and it’s at his most confident that he’s most unstable. 

It’s not like he’d care what she’s doing. It’s not like it’s a secret that she’s talking to Kara. Even if there was any doubt, Andrea would clear it all up with just a few words that this was a project she roped Lena into, that it’s nothing, that it’s entirely an ordinary addition to Lena’s routine. 

Still.

When she doesn’t answer him, Edge continues on his way down the hall, rounding the corner and getting buzzed into the next halfway room, out of sight. Lena stands aimlessly at the front of the line, even still when Mariola leaves the payphone and it’s her turn. 

“You gonna fucking go, or what?”

Lena turns around. It’s Dominique. Kozelka. She sold ecstasy laced with bath salts and put seven teenage kids in the hospital. She’s only been here for two years.

When she sees it’s Lena, her irritated expression flattens out into that of someone chastised, but she doesn’t apologize. Lena doesn’t really care for her to. 

She doesn’t call Kara.

The next day, she’s busy making arrangements for the evening payments, dealing out a total of seven black-suit cards. 

The day after that are the actual drops, and though she’s free during the calling hours, something about calling Kara on the same day as doing all of that gives her a headache.

By the fourth day, she’s just making excuses.

—

It’s been eight days since Kara sent her number. Normally she’d have received a letter by now, and as far as she knows, there’s not a 3-business-day waiting period on phone calls. 

Her paper is due in eleven days. 

She’s read over Lena’s case file nine times. 

Lionel Luthor cause of death: an injection of a synthetic, liquid nerve agent into the back of his neck just behind his jaw, upper right parasagittal plane. 

Lillian Luthor cause of death: repeated blunt force trauma to the anterior skull. Presumed murder weapon: a toilet tank lid found broken in the bedroom. 

Alexander Luthor cause of death: cervical fracture, fall down the stairs.

Lena Luthor tested positive for phencyclidine, otherwise known as PCP, a dissociative drug associated with anxiety, psychosis, aggression, violence. She was found on a local transit bus, coated in blood that tested as belonging to the deceased Lillian Luthor, allegedly en route to the residence of a woman named Samantha Arias. 

The defense team took on several, _several,_ angles, such as:

  1. Momentary insanity. 
  2. Automatism as a result of the intoxication, in that there was such a total destruction of voluntary control that Lena’s body acted without agency.
  3. Duress, in that Lena was so overwhelmed by the threat of being admitted to a rehabilitation center and the bodily suffering that comes with the detoxing process, that this stress overwhelmed her will, and she acted in self-preservation.



But the strongest arguments her million-dollar defense team managed to come up with were:

  1. The murder of the father was not with intention to kill, just maim or inflict extreme pain. 
  2. The murders of the mother and brother were accidental and/or self-defense in response to their reaction to the father’s potentially accidental death.
  3. The drug triggered a psychotic panic so severe that she was not fully conscious or aware of her actions.



The rebuttals that tore down these defenses were, respectively: 

  1. The potency of the nerve agent found in the bloodstream was too high to be considered anything but fatal.
  2. The severity of the injuries inflicted on the mother were too violent an overkill to be considered anything but deliberate, and the lack of self-defense injuries on the daughter’s body by the brother indicate no sign of a struggle, and thus imply a deliberate intent.
  3. Upon arrest, though medical personnel deemed her in shock and inebriated, she was considered lucid and self-aware.



What the defense seemingly failed to take note of or use to their advantage:

  1. Three different MOs is inconsistent with premeditation.
  2. Inebriation by a dissociative drug is inconsistent with premeditation.
  3. The fact that other common side effects of PCP are memory loss, impaired motor function, and loss of coordination, all of which would make it difficult if not impossible to carry out such carefully planned physical activities.



It’s been eight days. With the exception of Thanksgiving day spent with Kelly and Alex, Kara’s returned to her habit of bringing Kennedy a coffee after the fourth day of waiting, though he continues to hand her only a stack of pre-approved credit card applications, advertising circulars, an occasional bank statement, and all the rest of the junk mail that clogs her mailbox. Nothing from Lena.

Perhaps the most nagging, unsettling notion is that Kara knows that what little information she already does have from Lena herself could be enough for the assignment. It’s not ideal. She didn’t take enough time asking about her daily routine and the activities offered at the facility to compare the measures the state promised to take for both moral rehabilitation and punishment to the actual practice of her incarceration. She doesn’t have the details, but she has an intuition on Lena’s character, her attitudes, her outlook. She can comment on what seems to be an even-tempered personality, a contrast to the unstable and volatile character described in the case filings. 

It’s not ideal, and her paper wouldn’t be selected for the final presentation, but it’d suffice. 

But this distracts her, and though she has a handful of cases she should definitely skim over before her Constitutional Law seminar today, she settles on taking the chance that she probably won’t be cold-called in class, and spends her lunch with James halfway mulling over thoughts of Lena instead.

She gets cold-called in class, obviously.

After absolutely making a fool of herself in front of the entire hall, and watching the firm, disappointed press of Dr. Spheer’s mouth in her half-hearted, stumbling answer, Kara nearly resolves for tuning out the rest of the lecture. Slumping back into her seat, and mechanically scribbling down whatever snippets of Spheer’s next presentation, her thoughts are elsewhere. They continue to remain in this limbo-like elsewhere for the rest of the afternoon. Her mind trails just a few feet too far back from her physical steps, hides in her pocket on the bus ride home.

So, she can’t scrounge up the kind of wit of someone who answers questions spontaneously on the spot, who has the talent of bullshitting through a lecture cold-call. She can’t get a hold of case files by herself without the help of a boyfriend she’s been seeing for eight months and still can’t decide what she’s doing with him, can’t decide if her loneliness is really that desperate. And, of course, to top it all off, she is apparently not the interesting, clever type of person who can hold the attention of someone so cunning and sharp as Lena Luthor.

What finally draws her back to her the moment, back to her cluttered foyer as she kicks her apartment door shut behind her and pries off her loafers, shaking off the grimy sheet of city rain that soaks down on her hair and shoulders — what pulls her out of her reverie is an unfamiliar ringtone that blares through the apartment.

At first, she freezes, stands deathly still, just her quiet, shallow breaths and the faint drops of water trickling from her clothes to the hardwood floor.

And then Siobhan’s muffled shout barks through the walls for her to answer the damn phone, and Kara shifts.

Scrambling into the kitchen, the only room with the right modular outlet for the cable, Kara nearly topples the entire thing over in her haste. She clutches the hard plastic in her hands and her eyes immediately race to the screen like the sound might just be some kind of phantom trick all in her head.

Since setting up the landline again, Lena is the only person Kara’s told that the number works. Not Mike, not Alex, no one else.

So when she reads _Unknown Caller_ across the orange screen in digit block letters, Kara grins.


	3. the calls

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warnings:
> 
> 1\. this is where a couple non graphic depictions of violence come in — just slightly more detail about the luthor murders. it’s in the section that begins with “You’re not still going over that thing, are you?"
> 
> 2\. there’s also some mild aggression/intimidation tactics demonstrated by one of the guards in the section that starts with “Luthor. You have a visitor.”

_“What should I do? I see everywhere nothing but darkness. Shall I believe that I am nothing? Shall I believe that I am God?”_

_Blaise Pascal, Pensées_

—

[November, 2010]

When Kara finally plucks the wireless receiver from its stand and clicks to answer, she nearly worries it’s too late, that she waited too long, that it’s over, that she missed her chance, that this was the one and only time Lena would call, and it’s Kara’s own fault for not being here in time.

Maybe Kara does need to work on her tendency to jump to the worst case scenarios.

_“This call will be monitored and recorded. You have a collect call from… Lena Luthor… an inmate at a National City Correctional Facility. To accept charges, press 1.”_

The recording of her name isn’t automated like the rest of the message, just a fuzzy static of a woman’s voice, gone too quickly for Kara to note anything else about it.

Heart pounding against the cage of her chest, Kara pulls the phone down to quickly press 1 before she rushes it back to her ear. The cool plastic is slick in her hands, her palms clammy, and maybe this was all a bad—

_“Hello?”_

It’s gentle, blanketed by a light crackle of transmission, and ultimately _real._ Not an automated robot, not barely comprehensible courtroom recording, but a real, living, breathing person.

She almost forgets to answer.

“Hi.” Kara swallows, mouth dry. “Hi. It’s, uh, it’s me.”

_“You might have to be more specific.”_

She sounds so calm, and she answers so quickly, so fluid, whereas Kara is tempted to ask if they can maybe section out five minutes for each word for Kara to process individually.

“Kara. It’s— Kara.”

_“Kara… who?”_

She’s messing with her. Right? This is a joke? Lena Luthor tells jokes? That’s not weird, no. No, she’s definitely told jokes before in their letters. Hasn’t she? 

Oh, Kara can’t remember a single thing they’ve ever spoken about before this moment.

“Danvers,” she says stiffly, tipping her head back with a silent sigh and closing her eyes. Breathe, she just needs to breathe. “You’re the one who called me, you know.”

 _“Ah, that’s right, I remember you.”_

Kara thinks maybe she can hear a lace of amusement under her tone, but this is also only the fourth sentence she’s heard her say. Two and a half, if she were more conservative, so it’s not like she can really say she has any intuition at all about Lena Luthor’s intonations. 

She needs to get it together.

“I wasn’t sure if you’d call.”

Now Lena is the one who’s quiet, and Kara mentally kicks herself for being too brash, too accusatory or assuming too fast.

_“I almost didn’t.”_

She licks her lips. “At least you’re honest.”

_“Yes, well, that was one of the things I first liked about you, so. Figured I could give you the same courtesy.”_

This longer string of words rings like a melody over the line, and Kara is so mesmerized she struggles to catch the actual content of her words.

“Oh, uh. I mean, technically, you have no idea if I’m being honest with you. I could be a forty-something hermit hiding in the mountains somewhere, my bedroom walls covered in newspaper clippings with your face on them.”

Good _god,_ Kara wants to die.

Lena chuckles over the line just as Kara slumps to the floor, leaning back against one of the kitchen cabinets. _“No, you definitely sound young, so that much I believe. But, pictures? That is oddly specific, so I might have to question that one now.”_

Something about Lena remarking on how Kara’s voice sounds — to humanize her — sends a shiver down her neck, and she sits up straighter. “I’m not that young.”

_“If that’s the only part you’re refuting, then I definitely believe you have pictures of me somewhere.”_

She didn’t realize it was possible for her face to burn this bad. “No, god, I don’t have pictures of you. I mean, I’ve seen some, but I didn’t keep them.”

_“Why not? Am I not to your taste?”_

Kara’s words catch in her throat, because how the hell does she even answer that?

But Lena sighs before she can come up with something. _“Yeah, crazy and homicidal isn’t much my type, either.”_

“I don’t think you’re crazy.”

 _“No?”_

“I mean, if you are, then I’m pretty screwed.”

_“How’s that?”_

“Considering how much I’ve connected with the things you’ve said, then that’d mean I’m probably crazy, too.”

_“Like what?”_

“What?”

_“What have I said that you’ve connected with?”_

“Oh, um.” Shit. How is she supposed to remember anything right now? Kara stumbles back up to her feet disorientedly, her socks (still damp from the rain) slipping across the kitchen floor as she rushes to her room. “You know, uh, like—” 

But of course, she crashes into the rickety stand by the front door in the hall, knocking the glass bowl where she always tosses her keys and spare change onto the floor, and its prompt shatter startles Kara out of her skin. _“Shit,_ shit, oh ow, uh, sorry, um—”

Another laugh, rich and long. _“Are you alright?”_

The door down the opposite end of the hall bangs open, and Siobhan comes out with an incredulous scowl. “Kara, what the fuck are you doing?”

“Sorry!” Kara rushes over the broken glass, hopping on her toes to avoid the shards. “I’m so sorry, I’ll clean it up, just, in a bit!”

“You— what? Who are you even _talking_ to?”

Kara slams her bedroom door shut before Siobhan can argue and she continues hopping on one foot, the receiver tucked into her shoulder as she rips off her wet socks and the glass stuck to them, chucking it all into the hamper.

“Hi,” Kara says, quieter now, still breathless as she rummages through the papers on her desk. “I’m really sorry, you were saying?”

_“Did you just break something?”_

“Maybe. No. Yes.”

_“Do you do that a lot?”_

“What?” Kara laughs at an octave too high even to her own ears. “Of course not.”

_“Maybe I shouldn’t credit you too much for your honesty. Sounds like it’s more a result of being a terrible liar than anything actually admirable.”_

Finally, Kara finds the pile of letters, most of them wrinkled, one almost entirely stained by that first coffee spill. “Okay, would you mind not being a jerk for five seconds? I’m trying to answer your question.”

Even if it’s at the expense of her dignity, Kara gets a rush of pride at pulling yet another laugh from Lena.

_“Alright, yes, I’m sorry. What question are you answering?”_

“What you’ve said that I connected to.”

Lena only hums in response. 

“Okay, yeah, right here, a month ago you were talking about the quantum physics guy, but then,” Kara flips a page. “Your next letter, you told me you have this pathological need to know everything. Like, you recognize it’s impossible to truly know anything, but you still are desperate to try. Which, okay, I’ll admit that at first I didn’t really relate to that, because sometimes I think about just how much there is I don’t know, and it scares the crap out of me, and I thought that because of that, I always just stuck with what I _do_ know, you know? That I’d stay in my comfort zone, not bother to try to learn what I don’t know. But then I realized, that’s not what I do at all. Yeah, I think I am terrified of facing how much there is I don’t know, but I think it’s more because I realize it’ll never end. I won’t ever actually know everything, and, when you said that, I realized that’s exactly what excites me. Or, at least, I don’t waste my time worrying about how I never _will_ know everything, because realistically, I know that there’s just what I know, and anything else I’ll learn when it comes. Maybe I can point myself in whatever direction I want to learn in, but I know that there’s this infinite path of _knowing_ things ahead of me, and so I can’t worry about the other paths I could’ve taken instead. This is the one I’m on, it’s mine. I can learn anything, and I’ll never stop that. And then to top it all off, if no one knows anything for certain, then there’s no stakes. I can’t control the truth, but I can look for it. Does that make any sense?”

Lena’s quiet. Like, really quiet, so quiet that Kara scolds herself again for her rambling, and she drops her forehead to the desk as the embarrassment floods in hot and sticky.

But an answer never comes. Not to the question Kara’s asked, at least.

_“You’ve kept them? The letters?”_

Kara squeezes her eyes shut. “Yes?”

_“All of them?”_

Less uncertain now. “Yeah. Is that weird?”

_“I think a fair bit about you is weird.”_

There’s really only so many ways Kara can embarrass herself, or just make a mess of an already precarious balance, and she has a feeling she’s running low on that quota.

 _“But I suppose you are writing a thesis about me, so. Guess you should be keeping your research.”_ Lena stops abruptly, but the trail of her voice sounds like she’s not finished, and Kara presses the phone close to her ear. Lena sighs, an even exhale. “ _You’re just… not what I expected.”_

When Kara lifts her head from the desk, the top letter sticks to her forehead, and she peels it off. “Is that bad?”

_“It depends.”_

“On?”

_“Did you want to be predictable? Or did you want to surprise me?”_

Kara runs a hand down her face, leaning back in her creaky desk chair. “I honestly just wish you gave third options to these questions.”

 _“By all means.”_ She imagines Lena to be smirking, imagines what that would even look like on a face like hers to begin with. _“Come up with one of your own if it’s more fitting.”_

“I want—” Kara cuts herself off, almost a reflex, a yank at the back of her throat. What? Information? To know her like no one else seems to? To understand the mind of a criminal? To see the person that’s behind that? To see if they’re the same?

Lena shows the first sign of hesitance. Kara wonders what it would take to make Lena Luthor, of all people, embarrassed. 

“ _You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to._ ”

“I wanted to know why everyone is so scared of you,” Kara says in a rush before she can hold it back. “People here, my friends, some of the staff — they won’t even say your name. They didn’t understand why your name was on our professor’s list at all, and they didn’t understand why I picked you.”

 _“Well,_ ” Lena says with a wry laugh. “ _I assume you know why they’re afraid.”_

Her heart starts to pound again, a throbbing pulse under her skin. “I think I might’ve had a better idea about the answer when I was actually asking the question. Now… I don’t know. I just, I don’t know. I get it, but I really don’t. I really don’t at all.”

 _“I have to go._ ” Her answer is immediate, nearly cuts Kara off. She doesn’t know what to make of that.

But the line clicks dead before Kara can say anything more.

[December, 2010]

Lena calls back six days later, and Kara’s not alone.

“What is the reasonable-expectation-of-privacy test?” Kara reads, legs dangling off the counter, munching on a clump of candy.

In front of her, Lucy paces back and forth in the narrow kitchen, arms crossed, tapping her index finger against her chin. “It’s used to determine whether a government activity constitutes a search under the fourth amendment. The court has to ask whether the target of the search has an actual expectation that the activity observed by the government was private, then ask whether society would accept the expectation as reasonable.”

“Yep. Open up.”

Lucy turns, and Kara tosses a yellow jelly bean into her open mouth. Lucy immediately resumes her pacing, chewing around the candy as Kara reads off the next card. 

“What’s the trespass theory of the Fourth Amendment?”

“Property theory; the amendment holds if the government intrudes on anything lawfully owned, like home, papers, effects, whatever.”

“Would the conduct infringe the person’s reasonable expectations of privacy?”

Lucy stops, brow furrowed. “That’s not on the card.”

“I know, answer it anyway.”

“That’s… what? No, that’s a trick question, the theory doesn’t—”

The phone rings, and Kara doesn’t hear the rest of her answer. Lucy continues rattling off her answer as if she hears nothing, as if the receiver on the cluttered counter right next to the ripped-open bag of jelly beans isn’t running off the hook.

“Yo.” Lucy claps her hands. “Jelly me.” And then, belatedly: “Are you gonna answer that?”

Kara hops off the counter and stuffs the bag into Lucy’s chest, snatching the phone. With only a brief hesitation, Kara turns out into the hall and presses the green button.

_“This call will be monitored and recorded. You have a collect call from… Lena Luthor… an inmate at a National City Correctional Facility. To accept charges, press 1.”_

She’s just nudged her bedroom door shut behind her when a voice crackles through.

_“You picked me?”_

Kara tucks her hair behind her ear, crossing her arm around her stomach. “What?”

Lena sounds almost breathless, her voice airy and light. _“For your assignment — you said your friends wanted to know why you picked me. You made that choice yourself?”_

“Oh, um. Yeah?”

_“Did you have a lot of options?”_

“Uh, well, there has to be enough to choose from for no overlap in the class, and I think there’s a hundred-fifty of us. The packet to choose from was like five or six pages. Give or take.”

_“I see.”_

There’s a finality to her tone, like this was all she needed to know, all she needed from Kara, and now her curiosity can be laid to rest, and Kara can’t help but feel like she needs to fight just to keep her on the line.

“I’m glad you called,” she says hurriedly. “I wasn’t sure you would.”

_“You said that last time.”_

Kara sucks in her bottom lip, biting down on it hard. “I just, I know I have a tendency to put my foot in my mouth sometimes. So I mean, I wouldn’t have blamed you if you didn’t. Call back, I mean.”

Lena pauses. “ _How so?_ ”

“Like, you know. I know I don’t always say the right thing, but I don’t mean to upset you. I’m sorry, stuff usually sounds better in my head.”

“ _All due respect, Kara, but what are you talking about?”_

“When I asked about your—”

“Kara,” Lucy shouts, bursting through the bedroom door with both the candy and a disarray of flashcards in her arms. “If you think I have any chance of memorizing this shit by myself, you’re fucking deluded. Hey, since when did you get a phone? And who are you talking to, anyway? Is it Nia? Can you ask her to bring me her torts book? I think I forgot everything about negligence again. Bled right out of my fucking ears.”

“Sorry, one second,” she says into the receiver before tucking it into her shoulder. To Lucy, who drops both the jelly beans and the index cards onto Kara’s bed, she says, “Luce, I’m sorry, can you give me a few minutes? I’ll be back out in a sec, I need to take this.”

At her avoidance of the question, Lucy’s lips quirk into a smile. “Who is it?” she asks again.

“No one.”

_“I heard that.”_

“Mhm.” Lucy’s eye drops to how closely Kara clutches the phone to her neck and back up to what are Kara’s undoubtedly pink, flustered cheeks. “Is this your secret lover?”

Oh no. “My— my what?” Kara barks a laugh. “That’s, that’s ridiculous, I don’t have a secret lover.”

_“Wow, even I think you’re lying.”_

“Who is it, then?”

“It’s Alex.”

“Bullshit.”

_“You really are awful at this.”_

“Kara.” 

“Lucy, please, I promise I’ll be right back to help you in a— Lucy, _no.”_

The brunette makes a swipe for the phone. The ensuing struggle lasts only a handful of seconds that stretch on deliriously longer, and it consists of Lucy yelling, Kara kicking and squirming out from under Lucy’s heavy weight, and an irritated shout across the apartment from Siobhan.

“Hi,” Lucy chirps breathlessly once she triumphantly pressed the phone to her ear, her other arm holding Kara in a headlock. “Lucy Lane, here. Who am I speaking with?”

“Lucy, I swear to god, if you don’t let go of me _right now—_ ”

“Hello? Huh, I think they hung up on you.” The hold drops, and at the sudden release of pressure, Kara topples over the edge of the bed and to the floor in a heap of jelly beans and cards. 

Slumped against the radiator, panting, Kara puffs a tuft of hair out of her face just as Lucy tosses her the phone. Catching up with Lucy’s words, she sits up frantically, stuffing the plastic back to her ear. “Lena? Hello? Are you still there?”

 _“Yes._ ” Kara’s shoulders sag with relief. _“But I think you just gave away your little—”_

“I’m sorry, Lena? Is that Lena fucking Luthor?” Lucy scrambles across the mess of candy and blankets on the bed to the floor beside Kara. “Oh my fucking god, is it? Can I say hi?”

Kara holds it again out of reach. “It’s really not—”

“Holy shit, Alex is so gonna kill you.”

“ _No_ , because you’re not gonna tell her, and if you touch this phone one more time then I’m telling her about Cancún.”

Lucy falls back on her haunches, and her face pales. “You wouldn’t dare.”

“I would.” Kara grumbles as she works up to her feet, pushing off the wall. “And I will if you don’t give me just ten minutes alone. And clean up these freaking jelly beans.”

When Kara slams her bedroom door behind her, finding herself in the quiet of the hallway once again, Kara lets out a heavy sigh, and she can hear Lena’s quiet laughter on the other end.

“I’m really sorry.” Kara snatches her keys from the newly-replaced entry dish and tugs on a pair of shoes. “Thank you for not hanging up. I wouldn’t have blamed you if—”

_“Do you have abandonment issues?”_

“Abandonment issues?” Kara coughs a laugh just after latching the front door behind her, hovering at the top of the staircase. “You’re really jumping right to it. I uh— No, that’s— I don’t. Of course not.”

_“I thought we established you’re not very good at lying.”_

Kara shakes her head, moves out of her reverie and shuffles down the stairs. “Why are you asking me that?”

_“You just seem convinced that I’ll disappear at any moment.”_

Maybe it’s out of another defensive kick, but Kara feels a twinge of annoyance. “Sorry for trying to be considerate and not take the time you’re giving me for granted.”

When the line falls quiet to only a faint static, Kara kicks the toe of her shoes against the lobby door before she bursts onto the street, running a hand back through her loose hair, because _god,_ this shouldn’t be so hard. She wonders if she was born with an innate inability to keep her mouth shut, or if it was just a cursed talent she picked up somewhere along the way.

_“Why?”_

“Why what?”

When Lena pauses yet again, Kara knows before she’s even spoken that the question to come is not the one she’d originally intended. _“Is Alex your sister?”_

“Yeah.”

 _“Why would she kill you?_ ”

She can’t really blame her for eavesdropping, considering she stayed on the line at all. Kara’s head thuds back against the exterior brick of the building. Her mind wanders back to their earliest letters, to honesty and understanding.

“She thinks you’re dangerous.”

To her surprise, Lena laughs, and it’s up to only Kara’s imagination what a smile would look like on her face. She pictures lavender, inexplicably. 

_“I swear, you and all your friends really seem to forget where I am. You do realize I’m not leaving here anytime soon, don’t you?”_

She wonders if Lena’s picked up on Kara’s avoidance, her dodging conversation topics, how she bounces around between anything that hasn’t got to do with the true nature here. 

She wonders why Lena doesn’t say, _I’m not leaving here at all._

She wonders if what Lena means instead is: _The only way I’m leaving this place is when I’m dead._

“She’s just protective of me.” Kara bites her lip, scuffing her shoe on the cement of the sidewalk. “They all are.”

_“Can you not protect yourself?”_

Kara frowns. “Of course I can.”

_“I don’t mean anything by that. You just said it like there’s a reason for it.”_

“They care about me,” Kara says, a little hotter than she intends. “Is that not enough of a reason?”

_“I wouldn’t know. The only people who ever cared about me are dead.”_

This isn’t— compatible, for them. It’s nowhere Kara wanted this to go. She doesn’t want to think about it.

_“Jesus, sorry. I did not mean to say it like that.”_

“How did you mean to say it?”

Lena doesn’t answer immediately, and then she doesn’t answer at all. _“What were you saying before? About asking me something.”_

Right. The reminder jars her from her irritability. “Oh. I was just saying I’m sorry if I overstepped.”

_“When?”_

“I asked you about… him.”

_“Lex? You can say his name.”_

Kara’s foot begins to tap against the pavement. “Okay.”

_“You can ask me whatever you’d like, Kara, and I won’t hold that against you. I won’t answer anything I don’t feel comfortable answering, and then we move on. I assumed you’d ask questions about my family. The fact you’ve gone this long without doing so, asking me instead about my philosophical beliefs and poetry neither of us read, is surprising. It’s December, and I assume your semester is nearly at its end. I know you have an affinity for distractions, but I’m assuming you have to get to the point eventually.”_

She wants to ask what she’s supposed to say if she doesn’t want to get to the point, where that obligation is supposed to be kept then, if admitting that out loud is their final call.

“Were you two close?” Kara asks, repeating her question from weeks ago like a bruise that forgot to heal.

_“What do you think?”_

“I don’t know, that’s why I’m asking.”

Lena lets out another light chuckle, and Kara shivers, tugging her sleeves tighter over her hands. _“We used to be.”_

When Lena doesn’t elaborate, Kara asks, “What changed?”

Another laugh, deeper this time. _“You’d have to ask him that._ ”

“I read your case file.”

 _“Oh? Tell me more._ ”

“I think… it’s interesting how quickly the jury came to a decision.”

“ _How quickly?_ ”

“Seven hours. You didn’t know?”

Lena hums. “ _No, but I suppose I did. Time gets a little skewed when you’re on trial for a few murders._ ” Lena pauses, but before Kara can answer that, she asks, “ _Are you going to ask me if I did it?_ ”

That lurches something in her throat, and a knot forms in her stomach. “Do you want me to?”

“ _Cute._ _Not really, if I’m being honest. But can I confess something?_ ”

As much anxiety as that raises, she can’t deny the thrill of it. “Of course.”

“ _Have you ever forgotten something, something important, and in trying to remember, you conjure up instead all these different scenarios for how it could’ve happened? And then you find yourself questioning how reliable your recollection is at all anymore?_ ”

Vague, but Kara thinks about it. “Maybe if I’ve had too much to drink, I guess. Like if I wanted to remember something fuzzy from the night before. Why? Do you mean like when you’re trying to remember… that night?”

Lena’s laugh startles her. “ _No, and that’s exactly my point. Everyone wants to know about that night and what happened, but I— No. No, Kara, I don’t want you to ask me if I did it because that is one memory I refuse to distort._ ” The statement weighs heavy like an iron casing. “ _Can you understand that?_ ”

“Conceptually,” Kara says after a moment. “Yeah. Every time you remember something, you’re only remembering the last time you remembered it. Like playing telephone with yourself. The more times you remember something, it’s bound to become more inaccurate.”

“ _Right,_ ” Lena murmurs. “ _I— I don’t know why I’ve said all of that. I should wrap this up. Our time’s almost out._ ”

Something about her use of _our_ makes Kara’s chest tight. “It’s okay that you did. I mean, I don’t have to put anything in my report that you don’t want me to.”

Lena laughs again, and Kara clings to such a liquid sound. “ _Oh, it’s not you I’m worried about. I’ll call you later. Bye, Kara_.”

She hangs up, and Kara wonders if Lena is ever going to give her the turn to say goodbye. 

—

“Luthor. You have a visitor.”

Lena, on her hands and knees, scrubbing the glistening, just-waxed floors with a terry cloth rag wrapped around a small block of wood — because this prison is too damn cheap to buy a real buffer — ignores the beckoning. 

She doesn’t stop the stiff, circular motions across the floor, but a muscle contracts between her shoulder blades, and her jaw clenches. She can feel Gayle’s eyes on her, gummy like the soap under her nails. She’s only a couple meters across the floor from her, also on her hands and knees buffing the linoleum, though she actually stops at the entrance of the guard.

It’s Edge, because it’s always Edge who comes to fetch her. Lena’s not sure if it’s because he’s the only one with the appetite to face her, or if it’s because he’s the only one she can never refuse.

A coil of nausea, Lena’s fist clenches around the cloth.

He’s talking to the other guard on watch, the new guy, Queen. Queen’s arguing that Lena still has her hour to finish, and if she leaves now her payroll won’t count the last forty-three minutes of labor. She can practically hear Edge’s grim, charcoal scowl, can hear how little he gives a shit, can hear how little patience he has like a child attempting a negotiation.

She doesn’t have to turn around and look at Edge to know it’s not one of the good days.

When she first looks up, it’s to Gayle. The blonde mouths at her, _you get visitors?_

Lena doesn’t answer her. It’s none of her business. She stands, drops her block in the cleaning bucket they’ve been sharing, and turns to Edge.

After buzzing out the canteen doors, they emerge into the empty corridor. He remains just half a pace behind her while they walk in perfect, slow unison.

“What’s the deal with her?” he asks.

“Nothing.”

“Really.”

“She’s no one.”

“You talk a damn lot to nobody, then.”

Lena’s stomach rolls, her tongue licks back the discomfort as she keeps her tone steady. “Gayle’s just a friend.”

Edge snorts, and they round a corner to yet another empty hallway. “You’re too much of a paranoid lunatic to have friends.”

“Then I’m the lunatic you so wisely put in charge of your operation.”

He might think she says this in a lapse of judgement, that it slips out unwillingly, an afterthought. He might think she pays no mind at first, and regrets it as a consequence. But truly, she knows exactly what it entails, and she says it exactly four paces before the rare gap in security feed cameras of this hall, precisely because she knows what comes next.

Her skull thuds back against the plaster of the wall and his forearm is pressed to her throat just as she begins to smile at his crude, childish predictability.

“You’re in charge of nothing,” he growls, lips curled in an ugly snarl. “Don’t think for one second you’re not expendable.”

Maybe in another life, in a stronger time, she’d remind him of all the ways she isn’t. Jesus, she would _know_ all the ways she isn’t, how much they need her. 

But, in this one?

She flexes the tendons of her neck against his arm and stares back at his dark, beady little eyes with a contempt like rot down to the bone.

She doesn’t know anything, not really, not about that. The only trick up her sleeve is to recognize the line she treads across, to understand exactly what it is that teeters her each way, just as well as she sees how far she can only fall, how short such a drop. 

The clock is waiting. He doesn’t last long.

He drops her just in time to not let a bruise form, and all that remains when she enters the communal visiting room is a faint, hardly susceptible red mark just above her glottis.

The rest of the room, with all the nineteen visiting tables in their naked glory, is empty, save for one centered neatly in the middle. Lena slides onto the fixed stool across the woman that waits.

“It’s not my visiting day,” Lena says.

The elastic smile that Mercy Graves offers her is a taxidermied replica of the one she wears on the TV screen. “I know, but something came up for this weekend, and I decided I’d drop in today. The facility was kind enough to make an exception.”

The facility isn’t kind enough to do jack shit. Lena just wishes she’d admit she paid them.

“You haven’t been around in a while.”

“I know.” Mercy reaches across the table, wraps a thin, veiny hand around hers, and Lena notices how the guard on duty conveniently glances away. “And I’m sorry. I’ve been busy ironing out some deals on a new bill proposal, but I’m here now.”

It’s not like Lena missed her, not like that. Lena doesn’t miss anyone.

But Mercy’s bimonthly Sunday visits had been the most consistent part of Lena’s routine for the last six years, more than brushing her teeth or waking up to the smell of chlorine in the morning, and after the last two months of silence, Lena stopped expecting.

Stopped expecting, stopped hoping. It’s a blurry line.

Lena clears her throat. “It’s fine, I know you have a life. You don’t have to explain yourself to me.”

Mercy bares again that same marrowless smile. “Thank you for understanding, Lena, I appreciate that very much. But it does pain me to miss out on our time together. I hope you know that.”

“I do.”

“How have you been?”

There’s small-talk. It’s nothing worthwhile. 

And it isn’t long until Mercy’s mouth presses into a flat line, finally — the first indication of her impatience.

It’s hard to love the last resemblance of family she has left, if only because Lena can’t understand why she’s still around at all. It’s hard to love if she can’t rationalize being loved in return. This isn’t about a woeful anecdote where she deems herself unloveable, either. But the fact alone that Lena can’t rationalize Mercy’s love is enough, and her reliability has proven more worthwhile than any familial bond ever had. So no, Lena doesn’t love Mercy, not the way she’s probably expected to, being someone who has no one else left. But she certainly values her, craves her presence, misses her conversation, even if it’s just to argue. That’s worth just as much, as far as Lena’s concerned.

“Have you been writing?”

Lena looks up from her hands. Catches green eyes, regards the tired lines of pruning skin. “No. Not really.”

“Why not? You know how I love your prose. You have such a beautiful perspective.”

Lena shrugs, and she feels small, like a beetle scurrying under the concrete of this building. Though, with a small chuckle, she thinks even a bug would have greater freedom than she does.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.” Lena sighs. “I don’t know why. I suppose I’m just running out of things to write about.”

“Nonsense.” Mercy’s fingers clench around her hands once more, her skin warmer than it looks. “You have a lifetime of memories, it’s just about pinpointing them to the right narrative.”

Lena pulls her hands back into her lap. “I’ve already written everything. There’s nothing else. I don’t know what else there is to say about them. You know I was never close with any of them.”

“Then write again,” Mercy urges, glistening and earnest. “Rewrite something you’ve already done, revisit the same memory. Try again. They’re your family, Lena, and you’ll only repent by _honoring_ that.”

She recalls her last call with Kara, the concept of distorting something the more often you try to cling to it. A part of her wants to hold this moment up like a picture frame to the law student, to say, _you see? This is exactly what I’m talking about_.

Repent, Mercy said. She wants to ask, if only to see if she can pry an answer out of Mercy at all, why any sort of god would place these circumstances around her just to encourage her to seek their forgiveness. She wants to ask why, if there were any deity, they would let the unimaginable happen to her and expect her to pay the price, where any absolution could be found in any of that.

Maybe she did do it.

She hasn’t lost any sort of faith, Lena just never had any. She wasn’t raised religiously. And as far as she knows, neither was Mercy, but Lena knows better than to call her out on that. Lena figures she read some kind of statistic somewhere about how many incarcerated persons turn to some religion or another for comfort, how it makes them feel connected to a bigger plan, how there’s a promise of harmony after this is all over. Maybe she just got the wrong idea about Lena’s reasons for all the theological texts she’s been reading.

“I haven’t been hearing them lately,” Lena says carefully. “And I want it to be natural. I’m just waiting for their… essence to come to me.”

It’s bullshit. Lena knows it, Mercy knows it, the dumbass guard knows it. Lena has nothing left to say.

Small-talk that neither of them have any interest in carrying out continues on for another twenty minutes before Mercy finally excuses herself, and two guards emerge from the hall to escort her out through the four-inch steel door. She offers a light wave over the shoulder as she leaves, sandwiched safely between the two guards. It should amuse Lena, really, that Mercy always arrives alone but needs an entourage for her exit. Whether it be for the flare of a dramatic parting, or simply that Mercy expects their meetings to end ugly, Lena doesn’t know what the security detail is for.

And wickedly unfortunate for her, she does still care.

By the time Lena gets escorted back to the hall, it’s leisure hour, but it’s nearly over. Gayle would have finished their cleaning projects and returned back to her own cellblock by now. Lena did give her a few cards to deliver, more as a test-run than any demonstration of good faith, but she must’ve done that already too. She’s not in the rec room at least. Lena could probably find some cleaning project to occupy herself with if only to do something, and to be more or less alone, but she knows that she needs to save the aimless cleaning for tonight when she’s picking up collections. There’s really nothing left to do but retreat back to her own cell and idle until supper or drop in for a counseling session.

It’s not that she needs it, and it’s not that there’s a court order mandating it. She’s pretty sure she’s actually one of six people who regularly see their counselor personally rather than just share in group hour, which is already a part of their daily schedule.

She isn’t under any real obligation to go, but. She supposes Andrea is just pretty like that.

“You’re normally in a better mood after seeing her.”

Lena picks at the fabric of the cotton armrest, prying apart the drainage-brown threads with her blunt nails. “She just asked why I’m not writing.” 

She wishes she could say Andrea asked something like, _what did Mercy want to know?_ Or even, _how did your visit go?_ Something vague, dismissive, disconsidered. If it were irrelevant, Andrea wouldn’t point this out explicitly, she wouldn’t give any weight or meaning to Mercy’s visits. 

“Why haven’t you been?” Andrea asks in turn, dropping her notepad onto her desk in favor of leaning back in her leather seat. That’s another thing — she rarely takes notes. Lena knows for certain that she writes down the details of every other inmate, everything down to the temperature of their damn breath, but frequently, with Lena, she drops the pad, preses her chin to her palm, and listens like she’s just an old friend.

Lena will often pretend that is exactly what she is, even if she doesn’t know if this is why she trusts Andrea, or if it’s the most suspicious thing about her. “I don’t know. I just haven’t been.”

“You've been writing to Kara.”

Lena looks out the window. They’ve only been stuck inside three days this time. From what she’s been told, they’ll go outside tomorrow. 

“That’s different.”

“Knowing you, I’d take a guess that you choose your words thoughtfully no matter the format. But, alright. Tell me yourself then: how’s it different?”

It’s like wanting someone to do something for the sake of it, without needing to be asked. So when Andrea _does_ ask this, without a rhetorical pause afterwards as if she wouldn’t expect Lena to answer, Lena knows she’s just playing the commercial shrink. Lena knows she just wants her to say it.

“What,” she says, throat dark like a shadow. “You’re gonna pretend you don’t read the letters I write to her, anyway? Don’t they have you field everything I say? Don’t you listen to all my calls?”

Lena feels intoxicated off her defiance, but Andrea simply watches her with that same disjointed, calm observance only a psychiatrist could perfect.

“No. I know who you speak to, and who speaks to you in turn, but I don’t know anything you say unless you’d like me to know. It’s that simple.”

A sting builds behind her eyes, one Lena will never let get the better of her. “Nothing in this place is that simple.” 

Andrea smirks, likely at the melodrama of it all. “Why not?”

She wants her to just ask already. Like with Kara, she wants her to just know the right question to ask, even if Lena would rather lobotomize herself than answer truthfully. 

Lena stopped caring about Andrea’s reflexive need to turn most unanswerable questions back around on her, and instead has come to analyze them, understand them. This question stands out among the rest, and Lena’s reminded yet again of just a few days before, an echo she never thought could sound familiar. 

“Why aren’t you scared of me?” Lena asks.

Andrea doesn’t laugh, but her smile is patient. “Is there something I should be afraid of?”

She amends. “Why is everyone scared of you?”

To this, she hesitates. To this, Andrea wavers. It’s not so much that Lena wants to bring her to her knees, more just that there’s comfort in knowing that the closest person she’s come to be awed by so unconditionally in this world has knees to come down to at all.

“Are you scared of me?” Andrea asks finally.

“No.” Even if it’s instinctual, Lena can’t tell if she’s lying to herself.

“So who is scared of me, then?” 

“The guards, for starters. You’re different. They don’t bother you, and they never have anything lousy to say about you.”

Andrea's eyebrows raise, poised like class. “Is it a crime to be respected?”

Lena wants to ask if submission by default is as honorable as respect, or if there must be a precedent to it.

She wants to ask, _what do you know?_

She wants to ask, _why is your name the one they’re afraid to say?_

She wants to ask, _why isn’t it mine?_

“You are in a prison,” Lena points out. “So, there’s got to be at least some crime you’re guilty of. Were your GRE scores not high enough for a better graduate program? Was this the only place that would hire you after getting a master’s degree at a 185th ranking school?”

Lena’s struck a nerve, she knows, and the camouflaged blanket of indifference that hides Andrea’s annoyance is a work of art to marvel at, especially when her eyes flicker to the framed degree on the wall behind Lena.

“I choose to be here,” Andrea says. “Every day I make that choice, and I’m happy to. I like my job, and believe it or not Lena, but I like talking to you Lena.” 

“You really expect me to believe that you chose to be here with me today? Can’t you at least admit that this is just the result of what section of the alphabet you’re assigned to look after? Admit that I’m not anything but a last name to you.”

“Is that what you want? For me to tell you that I didn’t choose you?” Andrea actually laughs at her this time, but Lena can’t find it in her to be offended. “Why do you want so badly to prove this baseless insecurity that you’ll never be chosen for anything?”

Lena smiles. “Of course I’m chosen.” 

Andrea tilts her head, encouraging her to go on.

“The state chose me to die here, didn’t they?”

There. This is how a memory distorts.

This is not the first time she wonders what Kara looks like.

When reading her letters, she’d spent so long imagining the lilt of her voice, how she pronounces her words, how heavy her intonations are. Now that her questions from before are all answered, a plethora of new ones arise. It occurs to her that Kara probably knows what she looks like, almost definitely now that she thinks about it. She wonders how strange it would be to ask Kara what she looks like, how her hair rolls down her shoulders or if it touches them at all, what shape her jaw takes around each syllable, what tone her skin shines with underneath a luminant sun. Kara is certainly a strange enough person to not mind such a question, but finding any type of way to frame the exact wording in her mind just leaves Lena feeling… well, for lack of a better word, creepy. 

So, when the first thing she does in the morning, after pushing through a soggy fruit cup in her cell for twenty minutes and staring at the wall, is head for the phones, Lena is accustomed by now to the faint curiosity that lingers constantly in the peripheral of her thoughts.

Kara picks up on the second ring and dials through the agreement command.

Lena’s quick to her question. “What is it that you actually need from me?”

“ _Hey— oh._ ” Kara clears her throat. “ _Um, what do you mean?_ ”

Lena resists the urge to tug on the coil of the phone chord, feeling the acute weight of the security cameras on her back like a target. “For your assignment. You said that you won’t put anything in there I don’t want you to.”

“ _Yeah I did say that. Sorry, what’s the question?_ ”

“What are you writing about me? For your paper. What else do you need?”

“ _I… already wrote it, actually._ ”

Lena stands straighter. That only further fuels her need to know what Kara’s putting in it, because— what could she possibly have? Lena hasn’t told her anything of real worth. “You did?”

“ _It’s due tomorrow,_ ” Kara says, not without a slight note of guilt in her tone.

“Tomorrow.” 

“ _Yeah._ _But it’s okay if there’s something you want me to take out. I mean, if that’s why you’re calling. It’s not too late._ ”

The punctuation of those words threads cold under Lena’s skin, crawls around the base of her neck like static. _It's not too late._ How long has it been since she last murmured those words to herself? How long since she banished them from whatever little pocket of hope she still holds?

Lena rolls her shoulders back. This isn’t one of her books, not the script to some preached enlightenment. She shouldn’t ascribe this much weight to baseless sentiments.

She’s not even sure what she would and wouldn’t want Kara to write, how much she could possibly know anyway. “Will you read it to me?”

“ _You probably don’t want to hear it. It’s just a bunch of legal jargon._ ”

“Are you saying I wouldn’t understand it?”

“ _Oh my god, no._ ” Kara’s voice cracks indignantly, and despite the moment, the corner of Lena’s mouth twitches upward. “ _No, not at all, just— I mean, I wouldn’t want to bore you, is all. Or to make you feel like…_ ”

“Like?”

“ _I don’t know. Like this was all just some interview, like you’re just a project for a class._ ”

No. Absolutely not. “Isn’t that exactly what I am?”

“ _Do you want to be?”_

“Be what? A project?”

“ _Something more?_ ”

“What are you talking about?” This isn’t fear, but it tastes just as frantic. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

It’s in the pause that follows that Lena regrets snapping at her. Their relationship is tentative and professional at best, nonexistent at worse. And Lena’s never been one to raise her voice in the first place, not her. The aftertaste of it alone is enough to nauseate her.

She glances up to see if she’s caught anyone’s attention, but there’s no one except the next person waiting for the phones (Baker, Italian, thirty-one, aggravated assault).

“ _I don’t know,_ ” Kara says eventually. “ _Friends, maybe._ ”

“Friends?” It doesn’t sound the same coming from her mouth as it did when she was talking to Gayle. Lena turns abruptly back to the painted cinder block walls.

“ _Yep._ ”

“Do you even know what that is?”

“ _I’ve got a fairly good idea, yeah._ ”

Lena rolls her jaw, thinking both too hard and not clearly enough. “‘The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom.’”

“ _What?_ ”

“William Blake. He was an English poet.”

“ _Oh. What’s it mean?_ ”

“If you think we can be friends, you’ll figure it out.”

Kara’s laugh is nervous, Lena thinks. It’s difficult to pin down without looking at her. “ _Right. Blake, you said?”_

Lena only hums in affirmation.

“ _Okay… yeah, okay. I’ll—”_

“Visit me?”

Oh good _lord_ , Lena really did not mean to say that. Not in her thoughts and not out loud, and her vision is nearly swimming with embarrassment. She doesn’t even know _why_ she would even ask.

“ _What?”_

“Nothing. Never mind.” Lena can’t answer that. Hell if she’d answer that. She takes a trembling breath, forehead pressed to the wall, too rattled with herself to even—

“ _Ask me again._ ”

She blinks. It’s a curse, inviting someone to a place like this. Not a conviction to death, but a sentence all the same. She wouldn’t summon her worst enemy here.

Perhaps that’s the point. Kara might not be an enemy at all. 

Students certainly are a breed all of their own, aren't they?

“Will you see me?” she asks, quiet and low, as if the tonal change might be enough to mask the implications. 

“ _Yeah. Yeah Lena, I’d like that._ ”

—

“Your sister might genuinely kill me for this. We both know that she knows how to dispose of a body.”

These are the most exciting words Kara could have heard before breakfast. A smile breaks across her face, and she shuts away her law review citations immediately to lean across the diner booth. 

Kelly laughs at her. “Don’t look at me like that. You know if I’m gonna give this to you then I _will_ tell her myself.”

“Can’t you be morally grey just this once? For me?”

“No. Alex does enough of that for the both of us.”

She sighs through her nose, biting her lip as she considers. “You got it, didn’t you? All of them?”

“I… potentially have photocopies.”

“Potentially?”

“If you agree to let me tell your sister, then I’ll have a more confident stance.”

Kara turns her mouth down into a pout. “Oh come on. You’re not really trying to negotiate with your sister-in-law, are you?”

“If you can get your sister to actually propose some day, then you can have the in-law rights.”

“You know that’s not my fault, she’s been stuck looking at rings for years!”

“Again, you can either let me tell Alex you asked me to steal—”

“ _Borrow_.”

“—the Luthor autopsy reports, or you can tell her to stop chickening out already.”

Kara purses her lips. “I’m thinking the proposal might actually be easier.”

Kelly’s eyes flit very briefly to somewhere just behind Kara, and she lowers her voice. “You have about ten seconds to decide.”

A petulant growl in her throat, Kara concedes. “Okay, fine. But let me actually have some time to look over the report first, and then _I’ll_ tell her.”

Kelly smirks. “Deal.”

“You’re still going over that thing?”

Kara startles and slams the folder shut, fully prepared to stuff it away, only to find that it’s Mike dropping into the padded library seat beside her. 

He tilts his head with a pointed smile, half confused and half fond. “You okay?”

She slouches, rubbing a twitch out of her eye. “Yeah, I'm fine. I’m just tired.”

His hand finds its way to the back of her neck, squeezing the muscles along her shoulders in what’s probably meant to be soothing, but she flinches from his touch. And then she grimaces at the flash of hurt evident on his face. 

“I’m sorry,” she’s quick to say. “Just— not here?”

He glances at the room around them, and Kara doesn’t have to look to see they’re relatively alone at this hour, but her point still stands. A good number of her friends are known to sometimes linger around this late, too. 

Thankfully, as Mike is prone to do, he brushes off his hurt in good stride, and he nods at the folder again. “Really though, how come you’re still reading that thing? I thought you turned the paper in yesterday.”

Kara sighs. The only reason he knows about the autopsy report at all is because he’d been in her bedroom last night when Kelly stopped by with the photocopies, and while she could hide the man in her sheets from Kelly, she couldn’t exactly hide the papers from him. Or, maybe she could have, but she was too excited over the reports to think of it, thought him too harmless to care.

Not that she _would_. She probably would’ve told him anyway. It’s not that she’s hiding it from him, but sometimes his boyish confusion can be just as overbearing as Alex’s micromanaging concern.

“I could still have to present it,” she defends. “Professor Grant has to choose one essay for the final presentation, and I want to know as much as I can just in case.”

“Yeah but I thought you said she probably wouldn’t pick you. Shouldn’t you be studying for your other exams?”

She struggles to read his tone, even when he’s right in front of her and holding her gaze. He’s right, and she probably won’t get selected, but— “It doesn’t hurt to be prepared.”

He shrugs, and when he flips open the folder again, she resists the urge to stop him.

“Find anything interesting, at least?”

Another sigh falls flatly from her mouth, and she sits back with crossed arms. “No. Nothing that stands out to me, anyway. It’s all consistent with her case file.”

“Have you shown these to Alex yet?”

“No.” It’s still weird hearing him use her name, or that of any of her friends, as if he knows them. 

“She might see something you can’t.”

“Just because I’m not a doctor doesn’t mean I can’t read a few reports. I obviously didn’t just skim over them without doing any research into what they’re talking about.”

Either he misses the hostility of her tone, or he’s just used to how she bristles at his patronizing remarks. “I didn’t mean it like that, but she is a doctor, so she’s still better prepared to read this kind of stuff than you are. If there’s something you’re missing, she’s probably gonna catch it.”

She’s too tired for him to be right. 

“What are you looking for anyway?” he asks.

“I don’t know. Anything. I just— I have this feeling.”

“A feeling,” he repeats with a chuckle. “I know where this is going.”

“It just doesn’t make any sense, Mike. If everything was premeditated, why would she have taken drugs beforehand? Why would her father be the only one whose death looks orchestrated, and why would she slip him a paralytic just to inject him with a nerve agent at the back of his neck? It didn’t even inject _into_ anything — the report says the syringe just broke into his mouth and hit his teeth. He ended up swallowing most of the poison.” 

“She had a drug problem, didn’t she? Maybe she was using to take the edge off. And maybe she wanted the puncture to be inconspicuous?” He turns to Lionel’s external examination summary. “It says here it was right at his hairline behind his ear. She could’ve been hoping the coroner would miss it.”

“PCP doesn’t take the edge off, it's a trip all on its own. And he didn’t have any hair.” 

“Well, it could still blend in with the hair follicles. Technically.”

“But it clearly didn’t. And how did she even get the poison in the first place? What eighteen-year-old do you know that’s capable of getting a hold of a _chemical warfare agent_ on their own?”

“She studied chemistry in her undergrad, right? And she was some sort of prodigy. Maybe she made it. She definitely had the money and family connections to get materials.”

Kara flips the page again and points to the skeletal system report on Lillian’s autopsy. “Okay, fine, but here — ‘angle of blunt trauma at a twenty-three-degree angle from horizontal plane.’ Her mother was six feet tall, and Lena’s only five-six.”

“She hit her with a toilet tank cover. She probably raised the thing over her head.”

Kara huffs through her nose and forces her irritation down, which is when Mike finally seems to catch on. He gives an appeasing smile before he shuts the folder, looking at her more directly.

“All I’m saying is it’s not impossible.” He’s gentle about it, and somehow that’s worse. 

“No, but with the kind of money she had to her name, it should have been a breeze to get the charges reduced to at least manslaughter, if not cleared entirely. They hit her with the first degree for _all of them._ ”

“Well, you wrote this all in your essay, right?”

“Yes, but I still haven’t—”

“So stop driving yourself crazy over it.” Mike leans forward, not close enough to cause her to back away again, but still enough to border on intimate. He brushes her hand on the table briefly and then pulls away just as fast. “I know how easy it is to get caught up in these kinds of cases, but you can’t let them consume your life. I promise these files aren’t going anywhere, and you’re better off just checking them out more over your holiday break, when you’re actually done with finals.”

Her stomach twinges at his words, _these files aren’t going anywhere,_ and it’s all too easy to place why, but her intuition stops her from voicing it aloud.

“You’re right.” She swallows, packing up her things. When she comes to her feet, she placates her smile. “Come home with me?”

He grins like a teenager, honeyed with charm, before he nods.

The day that Kara is set to meet Lena Luthor, two things happen.

First, she gets an email from Cat Grant announcing to the class that Kara’s essay has been chosen for the final. Which— is too much for her to process immediately.

Because second, it finally sinks in what exactly is happening here. Which, to put it simply: today is the day that she is actually going to meet Lena Luthor. 

And she hasn’t told a single person about it. 

After reading the email, she has to sit down for a minute. Or several. But she’s already running behind schedule to make the bus, and after a speed-walk from her apartment to the transit stop, her thoughts are reeling faster than her feet, and she never gets the chance to ever take a seat because the bus is overcrowded, and so. Clinging to the metal pole with sweaty palms and silently spiralling into panic it is.

It’s only been six days since the call in which Lena asked Kara to see her — which sounded an awful lot like she was asking a different question, one Kara desperately wants to know the answer to — and it’s just now sinking in how entirely unordinary this all is.

In order to visit anyone at National City Penitentiary, Kara had to submit an application beforehand. Hearing back can take anywhere from a week to a month, and Kara’s heard of horrible waits that stretch on even longer. In the same call that Lena had asked her to come, Kara told Lena it might be a while for the application to process, so — if it’s to discuss the paper — the whole project would be well-over by then. What should have been the first red flag was Lena’s ominously vague, _don’t worry about that._ And then, even more bewildering, Lena called five days after submitting her application and told her to come Sunday at two.

No sooner, no later. She hung up fairly quickly after that.

Setting aside all of that, what are they even going to talk about? Kara’s not allowed to bring the paper in with her, and — sure, she could recite the rundown, but _god,_ talk about mortifying. It’s not that she’s not proud of her work, but relaying the sweat and blood of her research to the very woman that it all surrounds is as volatile an exchange as telling Alex that she’s going at all. 

Not that she considers Lena unstable by any means, but how would Kara look her in the eye and tell her that she believes she was put to an obscenely unfair trial and that the facts of her case don’t add up? How does that even come up in casual conversation? What’s the protocol for telling a woman in prison for life that Kara’s thesis centers around the possibility she shouldn’t be there at all? Coming from a second-year law student, no less. She’s getting a grade on her ability to present to a class her opinion on someone else’s life sentence. That has to be patronizing at best and outright offensive at worst, right? And perhaps there is a level of vanity to it, because what if Lena simply thinks her entire paper is ridiculous? What if she thinks, _of all the students to pick up my name it just had to be this idiot._

Kara sighs through her nose, letting her eyes drift shut and focusing on the back-and-forth sway of the bus. It’s too late to be having second thoughts now.

Besides, Lena was the one to ask Kara to come visit. If she’s disappointed with the person who walks into the visitation room, then that’s…

Completely warranted.

Kara wouldn’t go so far as to think she knows everything about Lena, but compared to what little Lena knows about her? She might as well. Under other circumstances, the concept of being an unknown, faceless student would be appealing. The sweet anonymity of being an objective viewing party, someone detached. That’s the benefit Alex or Lucy would be leaning on, the fact that Lena doesn’t know who she is, and they would work to keep it that way. But inexplicably, the realization that Lena could be expecting someone who is the polar opposite of Kara and be disappointed on principle by being wrong is terrifying.

The only consolation she finds is that, again, it’s too late to turn back, and Kara refuses to leave Lena hanging in wait for someone who never shows. She doesn’t know what kind of strings had to be (or _could_ be pulled) to expedite her visitor’s application, but it’d be rude to bail now even without it.

Maybe Mike’s right. Maybe this is all taking up too much of her time that she should be preciously saving for her studies. Maybe she should have insisted that she visit Lena only after her exams are over and just let this all be her winterbreak side-project. Maybe, regardless of how this meeting goes, this should all be left in this year, and come January she should stop driving herself senseless. 

It’s this whirlwind of contradicting thoughts and worries lurching around Kara’s mind that she spends the rest of her commute with. What would only be a thirty minute drive from the heart of her campus is instead over an hour by various bus transfers and intermittent walks in between. 

The prison’s website specified that she should plan to arrive thirty-minutes before her scheduled meeting time, which… did Lena mean she should arrive at 2pm, and they would meet at 2:30? Or were they to meet at 2pm and Kara should arrive half an hour before that? She can’t imagine that there’s any real harm in being early, not compared to the mistake of being late and blowing the opportunity all together. She’s read too many horror stories of visitors being turned away for the most ridiculous of reasons, ranging from a low-cut neckline to a set of keys that the guard wouldn’t allow the visitor to simply return to their car or leave in a locker.

So, far earlier than Lena told her to arrive, rubbing itchy eyeballs unaccustomed to contact lenses (because a pair of glasses could easily be considered dangerous jewelry), fussing with her hair that she’s unused to wearing loose (as a hair tie could also be considered precarious), wearing a black long-sleeved crew neck shirt (which is neither too loose to suggest she’s hiding something nor too tight to be considered offensive) and a pair of tube-straight khakis (to avoid resembling the denim that inmates wear), Kara approaches the penitentiary. Too paranoid to risk it, she didn’t bring her phone or keys, didn’t wear shoes with any laces, buckle or other removable accessory. And still, she didn’t expect to still be this nervous. 

What exactly she’s even nervous about is still a mystery, even with the last hour of anxious speculation.

The only thing she carries on her person other than the clothes on her back is the passport in her pocket. A state-ID would suffice, but she read of someone with a Florida license being turned away because of how poorly the state printed their IDs.

So. Kara has spared no precaution.

Even still, the back of her neck prickles like static as she approaches the reception desk inside the prison’s front entrance, and her voice sounds far away when she clears her throat.

“Hi, I’m uh— I’m here to visit someone?”

The guard at the desk, a younger man with pale skin and a high-collared pale blue uniform, doesn’t spare a glance from his desktop. “Name?”

“My name? Kara Danvers.”

“The inmate’s name.”

“Oh, right, sorry.” She swallows. “Lena Luthor.”

Only now does his gaze flit away from the screen and to her face, his gray eyes suddenly fixed and hard. “Lena Luthor,” he repeats.

“Yes.” She pauses, and then adds: “Sir.”

He regards her for another moment, expressionless except for the stern point of his brow, until finally he says, “Take a number and have a seat.”

Beside the desk is a red ticket dispenser, and she takes one despite the otherwise empty waiting room. While she sits, she can’t help but watch the guard pick up the receiver and hold it to his ear. She can’t catch his words, but the call doesn’t last long, and soon after he hangs up another guard emerges from the taupe steel door behind him, and another conversation that Kara can’t hear follows.

“Miss Danvers, was it?” the new guard calls.

Kara can’t really find it to be embarrassed that she’s blatantly caught staring — the waiting room _is_ empty, where else is she going to look? — and she returns to the desk.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“Visiting…?”

She wonders how many times they’ll make her say it. “Lena Luthor.” 

The new guard is taller and fuller than the one in the seat, his jaw more prominent and voice more commanding. He nods with an easy half-smile, glancing her over, and Kara catches the velcro patch on his breast. _M. Edge._

“What time?” he asks.

“Two o’clock.”

He quirks a brow. “You’re early.”

“Yes. They say fifteen minutes early is on time, right?”

The guard laughs, a deep, reverberating thing through the air. “And what do they say about an hour?”

Kara hesitates, because every word counts here and the slightest misstep could warrant them sending her away to come back another time. Not that she has anything to hide, but it’s a matter of making sure she doesn’t look like she does either. 

But before she can fret over it too much, he waves a dismissive hand. “I’m just giving you a hard time. I respect the punctuality.” He picks a clipboard up from the desk and slides it onto the counter in front of her. “I’ll need to see an ID and then you can go ahead and sign in.”

She hands him her passport, waiting for him to look it over and scan it. When it clears out, he hands her a pen, and she starts filling out the sheet.

“What’s the reason for your visit?” he asks as Kara hands him back the board. “Business, pleasure…?”

She can’t tell if he’s joking or not. His tone wavers constantly between sarcasm and weighted intent. 

“Little bit of both, I guess.”

“Oh yeah? How do you know each other?”

She loses her chance to reply when the reception doors open, this time the front entrance that Kara herself had come through. She wouldn’t have paid it any attention, but both guards behind the desk immediately straighten up. Their expressions aren’t quite grim, but they slip into something even more stoic than before, and Kara turns to see who’s caught their attention.

The woman that crosses into the lobby enters like Kara imagines someone might enter a church. Her steps are languid yet precise, and she manages to keep the clicks of her heels muted, as if accustomed to making her presence as unobtrusive as possible, and the unspoken command she reigns over the room seems almost accidental. She smiles at the two guards first, her matte lips like marble. 

“Miss Rojas,” the older guard — Edge — says, again in the same half-sarcastic and half-pointed tone. “Nice surprise to see you here on a Sunday. What have I done right to get so lucky?”

“Your job, I hope.” The woman stops just a few paces behind Kara. “Don’t let me stop you from it either. I can wait.”

“She’s all set.” He looks to Kara again and nods back at the waiting area. “Have a seat, we’ll call your name when you’re set to go through security.”

“Thank you.” Once Kara has her back turned, she offers a brief smile to Ms. Rojas, and keeps her stride slow back to the seats.

“So Luthor’s got a visitor,” Edge says quietly. “How ‘bout that.”

“Mm, I’m aware.”

There’s a pause, and Kara strains to keep listening, tucking her hair behind her ear. 

“You knew?” 

“Yes, Morgan. My patients do tell me things, believe it or not.”

“I didn’t see it in this month’s logs.”

“Which ones?”

“What does that mean? The _logs._ ”

“Well it’s on today’s docket, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but—”

“Then don’t worry your pretty little face about it.” Her smooth, velvet words drip with sincerity like she’s assuring a child of their safety. Kara hears the brief shuffle of materials, some more murmured words that she doesn’t catch, and finally the repeated beep of a scanned ID.

“You never said why you’re in today,” he says, slightly louder this time as Ms. Rojas hovers just outside the heavyset glass door, her hand waiting on the handle.

It’s hard to tell, because Kara is trying to be subtle this time in her eavesdropping so she only watches from her peripheral, but she swears the woman glances at Kara before she answers.

“Overtime,” she says at last. The guard’s only response seems to be the loud buzzer that opens the next door, and when she leaves the lobby is quiet again.

Eleven minutes shy of two o’clock, the first guard finally calls Kara’s name and sends her through security. It’s not very different from airport security, if only a bit more thorough. She has no belongings other than her shoes and passport to send through the x-ray, and she passes the walk-through scanner and handheld metal detector just fine. 

All in all, it takes far less time than she expects, and by the time she’s led into a vast visitation room that looks more like a high-school lunchroom, her skin is thrumming with anxiety like ash, and she’s half-convinced she’s dreaming.

Because three months ago — hell, even just a few weeks ago — Kara could not have fathomed she’d ever be signing herself into National City’s maximum-security prison to visit a woman on death row. Not for any reason of feeling unsafe or perturbed by who Lena is, but for the simple fact that Kara feels so horribly unremarkable that it’s nearly _laughable_ she was invited here, of all people. Especially once she considers the overheard conversation in the lobby, taking visitors doesn’t seem to be a regular thing for Lena in the first place, and where this should make her feel special, it only serves to pique Kara’s anxiety further.

Her muscles taut with nerves, Kara can hardly sit still as she waits at a white metal table, the coolness of it offering little to no comfort.

Professor Grant chose her essay. 

Shit.

All things considered, it’s not the worst thing to have happened to her. For her grade, it’s a blessing, practically an assured pass for the class, because instead of having to respond to anyone else’s case herself, she only has to organize her findings into a presentation and craft her own exam question for everyone else to answer. While of course time-consuming, there’s no more legitimate research she actually has to do, nothing more but packs and fillers to ensure a smooth demonstration.

This should be a gift, an honor — and it _is_ — but all Kara can think about is how she is going to have to stand at the front of a lecture hall and share everything she’s learned about Lena Luthor so far. Even more awful, she’ll have to take questions and arguments against everything she’s proposing. It’s one thing to pour over letters with Lena and submit her findings to an esteemed professor, and it’s quite another to put on full display an extremely controversial stance to over a hundred of her peers, at a university that detests the woman in question on impulse.

She can’t do this. She can’t look Lena in the eye when she’s hearing an echo of every rebuttal and counter her classmates will throw at her. Oh god, she really can’t do this.

Kara lurches to her feet, sheer panic fueling her, and is just about to turn back for the way she came when she sees her.

She hadn’t even noticed her enter the room.

Still a few meters from the table, Lena hasn’t seen her yet. Or maybe she has and her gaze has just wandered — Kara’s not sure how she’ll even know it’s her, if someone told her who to look for, if she’s just figuring it out herself, if she’s supposed to already know, if—

A set of eyes balance with Kara’s gaze, and she nearly chokes on her tongue.

She looks older.

Which makes sense, obviously. She was eighteen when she was arrested, when the last photos of her were taken, and it’s been five years. Finishing adolescence and emerging into early adulthood can change a lot of things: the clearer definition of her cheekbones, the more prominent cut of a jawline, the lengthened drop of her neck, a shorter cut of her hair.

Her eyes are just as unflinching and focused as every published image and archived footage of her had always depicted, and all Kara can do is stare.

Lena looks her up and down, at the table, and then back to her standing form. She raises an eyebrow. “Are you being chivalrous, or did you want a hug?” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just reiterating that i'll be noting every chapter with any applicable trigger/content warnings
> 
> would it be better if i put them in the end-notes to avoid spoilers, and those who want to see them can look for themselves? does anyone have a preference? or is it helpful to have them at the beginning?


	4. the visits

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning: minor character death. i’ve put more detailed trigger warnings for that in the end-notes bc they _are_ a spoiler this time

_“This night I’ll conjure, though I die therefore.”_

_Christopher Marlowe, Doctor Faustus_

— 

[December, 2010]

She’s pretty, Lena thinks idly. And blonde. She hadn’t really been expecting blonde.

Kara also looks helplessly lost just standing there. Lena can’t tell if she’s always this stiff-backed or if something about today is special. 

At Lena’s question, Kara almost looks too pained to answer.

“Neither,” she blurts finally, still standing tall and frozen.

Lena raises her brow. “Neither?”

“I’m— um, I’m sorry. I’m just panicking a little bit.”

Lena’s line of sight flickers to the guard at the doors, his face beginning to sink into that cursory frown as he watches them. They’ve already been standing too long. 

To Kara, not without a hard edge, Lena says, “Either leave or sit down.”

Not waiting for her to choose, Lena slips into the metal stool opposite the law student and continues to stare forward with a sternness finely veiled by her patience.

Kara sits.

“Why are you panicking?” Lena asks.

Kara struggles to keep still, her hands laced together on the table but each finger fumbling over the other in a constant state of restlessness. “Because I’m not sure who you’re expecting.”

“You are Kara Danvers, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” she says hastily. “Yes, of course I am. I just mean I feel like— I could be anyone. And you wouldn’t have any idea.”

“An opportunity you’d think most would be excited about.”

“I’m— Yeah, no, I’m not going to tell you I’m not like most people.”

“Good.” Lena purses her lips into a slight smile. “You’re off to a good start, I’d say.”

As far as the woman who wrote about being terrified of her own personality, Lena would say that the Kara before her measures up well. 

“I’m panicking because I don’t want to disappoint you.”

That catches Lena off guard. “Why?”

“Because what if you’re expecting someone else? Maybe I was setting myself up too much in our letters to just be the kind of person I want to be and not who I actually am, and you’re going to see right through that quicker than I can realize I messed up at all.” 

Lena considers how to make a dismissal sound polite. “No, not how, I meant why wouldn’t you want to disappoint me?”

“Oh.” Kara’s throat flexes with a swallow. The girl blinks, her long lashes flitting with nerves. “I— I don’t know. Because I don’t. Am I supposed to have a reason? Would that matter to you?”

Perhaps it’s her tone, or Lena is just noticing how Kara always has a tendency to punctuate all her words with a question, but this one in particular makes her tilt her head. “Hm. Funny.”

“What is?”

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you talk like a reporter.”

In the brief lapse of silence where Kara stares at Lena blankly, and where Lena herself analyzes every breath and pupillary twitch in between, she wonders if she’s made a grave mistake inviting her here. It doesn’t last long, because in that pause just before Kara answers, Lena remembers an early letter from over a month ago.

“I did study journalism for a little bit,” Kara says, reminding her of something she already knew. Christ, she knew that. “But am I asking too many questions? Is this too much?”

It’s not that Lena wants to be treated like something precious, god forbid delicate, but the simple way Kara asks her this is such a foreign thing outside of Andrea’s office. The thrum of such mundane, ordinary pleasure fans low in her chest.

“I’m sorry,” Lena finds herself saying, much to the surprise of them both. “No, you’re fine. I guess I’m just doing a little panicking of my own.”

“So much for that photographic memory, huh?” Kara offers a tilted, half-droll smile, and Lena gives a surprised laugh at the lighthearted attempt.

“I never claimed to have photographic memory. I said my eidetic capacity is stronger than most.”

“Oh, excuse me.” Kara holds her hands up mockingly. “I didn’t realize I was talking to such a high intellect.”

“Didn’t you? What else would you have picked me for?”

“I heard a rumor you’d be nicer in person.”

“Mm. Seems your sources led you astray.”

“Seems like it,” Kara says, and then her amused smile softens. “So I told you why I’m panicking. Why uh, why are you?”

“Really? Show me yours, I’ll show you mine?”

“I mean it’s only fair. Am I really that much different from what you were expecting?”

“Hm. I suppose I did think you’d be shorter.”

Any residual humor falls away now. “What? Why?”

“You don’t speak like someone who’s very tall. Over the phone and in your letters.”

“Well.” Kara huffs, sitting up straighter in her seat. “I thought you’d be taller. _You_ talk like someone who’d be tall.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t—” Kara’s brow furrows. “Are you deflecting my question?”

“Probably.”

“How much time do we have?”

Lena avoids glancing at the guard again, and instead focuses on the feather-light blush of Kara’s exasperation. “How much time do you want?”

“Enough to move past the part where you make this hard for me just for the fun of it.”

“Is that what I’m doing?”

“Now look who’s following a reporter’s script.”

“I’d call it more psychological manipulation,” Lena says amusedly. “But, you know. Pot meet kettle.”

“You’re not a fan of reporters then, I take it?” Just as Lena opens her mouth to answer, Kara’s face crunches with hesitation, and she cuts her off. “I’m sorry, that was a stupid question.”

Maybe this is a little fun, if only because it’s entertaining to see how sensitive Kara expects her to be. “Is it?” 

“I mean, there haven’t been a whole lot of them with the best of things to say about you. I wouldn’t like them either.”

“It’s less to do with what they say about me, and more about what they used to say _to_ me.”

“What would they say to you?”

Lena narrows her eyes slightly, the corner of her mouth quirking up. “Is this really what you want to talk about?”

“Um, I mean, I didn’t come with an agenda exactly.” Kara flexes her hands over the table, as if they’re sore from being so closely clenched for this long. “But you didn’t want to answer my other questions. Not that I’m trying to make you feel guilty or anything,” she’s quick to add. “I guess I’m just trying to find something you do want to talk about. I’m just happy to be talking to you at all.”

Maybe it’s because Kara seems genuine, but Lena does feel a twinge of guilt. She was the one to invite her here, after all. 

“I don’t get many visitors.” And then, because that sounds terribly too much like a call for pity, she adds, “Which is by my own choice. I only mean to say that I’m not quite… used to this, yet.”

She doesn’t really mean to say _yet_ , but it’s too late to retract it.

“I was surprised you asked me to come,” Kara admits.

“Am I really that unpredictable to you?” 

“It depends.”

“On?”

Kara grins, a stark contrast to her rigid and anxious demeanor thus far. It’s surprisingly luminant, Lena thinks; it blooms across her face like there’s room for little else. 

“Did you want to be predictable? Or did you want to surprise me?”

Hearing her own words from just a few short weeks ago echoed back at her, Lena can’t help herself from smiling. “Do I have to come up with my own third option?”

“You can, but you don’t have to.”

Lena takes a moment to consider. “I want to know why you’re here.”

“You asked me to come.”

“Yes, and?” 

Kara’s gaze drops to Lena’s hands on the table, and her eyebrows twitch together. “Because I wanted to.”

“Why?”

“Why does there have to be a reason for everything?”

It’s strange, seeing Kara get defensive in person. Over the phone it was easily mistaken as hotheaded, or even just annoyance. But the way Kara draws her hands back into her lap and her shoulders bunch up closer to her neck — she just looks like someone afraid of tight corners.

Lena wants to tell her there always is a reason whether either of them like it or not. There’s always an ulterior motive. Even if it’s not necessarily malicious, it’s still _there_. 

But Kara’s tensed up like she has her back to a wall, and Lena finds it’s not a place she cares to force her in.

“You don’t have to give one,” she says, because she’s not about to lie to her but she’s fine with changing the subject all the same. “I just want to make sure you didn’t feel obligated to come. Or maybe if you had more questions about your paper, but I suppose you have finished that by now.”

“Right. About that.” Kara looks at her again, only briefly, and then back down to her hands. “So, Cat Grant — she’s the professor for my penal state seminar — at the end of the term, once she’s read everyone’s papers, she chooses one to be presented during our final exam. I mean, it _is_ the exam. I have to design a prompt for the class’s response.”

“You do?”

“She chose us. I mean— me. My paper. About you. Yes.”

That’s… an interesting development. It’s one thing for a lowly student to submit a paper to a professor who’s subjected herself to reading dozens, and it’s another for an entire hall to hear it.

“I didn’t mention it sooner because I really didn’t think she’d pick me,” Kara goes on urgently, again catering to Lena’s imagined sensitivity. “Not because of you or your case, but just— I don’t know, I mean I did my best to do you justice, and it’s not like I didn’t think you’d be interesting enough or— not that you’re just a figure to showcase like some morbid type of show-and-tell, obviously. Oh my god, not that— I didn’t mean _you’re_ morbid, just that like, that type of show-and-tell would be morbid, because that’s usually reserved for children, and—”

“Kara,” Lena interrupts with a gentle laugh.

“I don’t think you did it.”

That blossom of serenity crumples.

“That’s— I mean, that’s what my paper is about. What my presentation will be about. Or well, it’s more about how I think you were put to a suspiciously unfair trial, and the circumstances don’t add up. Aggravating or mitigating, I think. I’m only a second year and I could have given you a better defense than what your team came up with, and that’s not me just being arrogant or anything.”

“Wow. How sweet of you,” Lena says calmly, but every web of nerve endings and tangle of ligaments are throbbing inside her now. “You turned a life sentence into a thesis for brownie points.”

“I— Wait, what?” 

“Figures. Of course.” Lena laughs, and it tastes ashen on her tongue. “Of _course._ It all makes sense now.”

“What does?”

“You’re just like them.”

“Like who?”

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe all the internet groupies who get off on glamorizing the death of my entire family. You want to know what those reporters would say to me? When the dust finally cleared, they _adored_ me. I don’t give a damn about being hated, Kara. I take issue with the fanatics who paint me like some kind of celebrity worth idolizing.”

“Okay, I think we’re really having a major communication issue right now.” Kara leans back like the space between is volatile, her expression careful. “As… respectfully as I can possibly put this, what did you think I was going to write about you? A book-report summary of your case?”

“I don’t know, you never talk about it,” Lena says in a clipped whisper. 

“Because I thought there were better things to talk about!”

“Oh really? You thought it was more productive to tell me all about how everyone you know is afraid of me?”

“That’s not what I said.”

“It’s exactly what you said.”

“Okay, well— It’s not what I meant.”

“Just admit that the real reason you’re here is because I _fascinate_ you, and it’s thrilling to think I invited you here.”

“Of course you fascinate me,” Kara says, at last biting back. “But that has nothing to do with the crimes that put you in here. It’s just because— just who you are! The person I’ve been getting to know, the one on the other side of those letters and calls.”

“Your obsession becomes more palatable when you dissociate me from the murders of my family, is that it?”

As quickly as it’d come, Kara’s irritability is already fading. She just looks hopelessly confused. “Why are you twisting my words?” 

“Because at worst it’s all true, and at best you’re disillusioned to your own motivations.”

Lena expects that to be it. From the way Kara leans back on her stool, a sad understanding settling in her expression like wind revealing a clearing, it seems as if she’s made the decision to finally go. Which is fine, because this anger is gratifying in itself if only because it’s familiar.

But Kara softens, and it’s a damned, sore sight.

“Why did you ask me to come?” The blonde’s words are gentle. “Really. I want to know what you actually were expecting, because I don’t know where I went wrong.”

“Someone who—” But Lena wires her jaw shut, and she’s not entirely sure why she feels the need to brace herself, why her stakes in this answer feel so personal. 

When Lena says nothing more, Kara continues. “I thought at the very least, we were friends. I wasn’t expecting much, I guess, but I like talking to you. I feel like I can in a way that I can’t really with other people. It’s easy to, and I know you’re going to say it’s because you’re a stranger or because you’re detached from my life, but I…”

Either Kara loses her train of thought, or it doesn’t feel worth explaining anymore. She shifts in her seat, and gives Lena a jaded look.

“I figured out that quote you mentioned,” Kara goes on. _“_ The one you said I should figure out if I thought we had a chance at going anywhere from here. _The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom._ At first I thought it meant something like, it’s by accumulating things, knowledge or money or whatever, that leads someone to learning the true meaning of life. That it takes time, life, experience, to fully understand. But then I thought, what does that have to do with you and me? So I started reading some more about it.

“It was taken from one of Blake’s Proverbs of Hell, and at that title alone I started to realize you weren’t trying to tell me something… good. He was talking about wanting things, wasn’t he? About resisting it? He didn’t mean wisdom in any sage-like sense of the word, he meant that it’s only by taking our desires too far that we learn what’s too much.”

There’s a tender quality to Kara’s words, as if she’s exposing a personal part of herself she hasn’t before. Lena feels almost embarrassed to be witnessing it like it wasn’t meant for her eyes, but her curiosity is too persistent.

“So, what is it?” Kara asks with a laugh. “Were you trying to warn me? Were you only saying yes to us being friends because you figured it was the only way for me to realize it was a mistake to try?”

Lena quirks her brow. “Your words, not mine.”

“But then I realized that that couldn’t be what you meant, because you wouldn’t have said it without knowing what came after it.”

It’s certainly been a few years since Lena last read _The Marriage of Heaven and Hell_. Not long enough to make her wary, exactly, because the sentiment is still the same, but Kara’s words piqued her interest.

“He didn’t write about desire just to say it’s something to be repressed,” Kara says, looking terribly pleased with herself. “Because later, he said: _Sooner murder a child in its crib than nurse unacted desires_. So, it became obvious to me then, he wasn’t trying to talk anyone out of their desires, but he saw them as something to be celebrated, or at the very least just something important for people to explore, and not just as a warning sign. He encouraged it.”

“An infant in its cradle.”

“What?”

“You said ‘child in its crib.’ It’s ‘infant in its cradle.’”

“That’s… great. Thanks.”

Kara didn’t sound very grateful.

Lena regards her carefully, Kara’s cheeks pink with some strange sort of exhilarated frustration, her mouth wet with so many hurried words tripping over one another, those same rapidly blinking eyes like the air’s too dry. There’s something enchanting about her, however naive and annoying she is.

“You worked that all out yourself, did you?” Lena asks. “So you’re not one for most poetry, just casual Romantic analysis?”

Kara’s mouth presses together into something halfway between a pout and a grimace. “Fine. No. I talked to a librarian, but my point still stands.”

“Really.”

“Yes. You can’t tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about because I had an expert weigh in.”

“Tell me, then: what is your point?”

“I think you said yes and asked me to come because you know that I understand.”

“Oh, wonderful. Are you going to tell me you’re familiar with loneliness or some other profound bullshit, is that it?”

Kara leans forward, the turn of her mouth both so grave and so kind. “I understand what it means to preserve the things that hurt us. Protecting them, even.”

Maybe the lukewarm content of pleasant conversation has disappeared, and maybe in its place Lena was able to derive at least _some_ pleasure out of arguing and animosity, but now, it seems that Kara has turned it all around once again. This is not just the refreshment of two friends and light-hearted banter, and it is no longer the safe balance of antagonistic territory.

This — it is nowhere Lena wanted them to come to. Because there’s only so much that can be done when someone tells you not to think of a purple elephant. Matter of time before its image pops into your head.

Lena almost would have preferred that she’d taken some kind of opportunity to storm out in a wrath when she had the chance. 

“So?” Lena asks.

“What do you mean, _so?_ ”

“I mean exactly that; so what?” A thick layer clouds her voice, and Lena hates it. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

Kara studies her, and Lena can’t discern how she feels about whatever she finds. “Do you want me to leave? I feel like I’m talking too much, and you look like this isn’t all that... nice, anymore.”

A part of her wants to say no, tell Kara to stay. It’s small, but it’s there. For whatever that’s worth.

But it also doesn’t feel like there’s much here for them anymore, and Kara’s words have taken far greater a chunk out of Lena’s resolve than she’d first reckoned the girl was capable of. She doesn’t know what’s worse: the hollow feeling in her stomach now, or that Kara was capable of putting it there at all.

“Yes,” Lena answers. “I’m sorry you came all this way.”

“Don’t be.” To her credit, Kara takes it all with grace, stands with ease like they’re ending a meeting. Lena’s not sure why that detail is so depressing.

“Who was that?”

The recreation door has just barely closed behind Lena before it opens again. It’s Gayle, looking at her with that same eager, doe-eyed expression she always has when she sees her. A child too excited by a flower to care if its roots are already dead or not.

“Who was who?” Lena asks.

Gayle has cuffs around her wrists, which hang loosely in front of her hips and connect to a chain leading to shackles around her ankles, and the guard that’s escorted her into the room is now unclipping the ones at her feet. Newer inmates start their time at the penitentiary wearing handcuffs anytime they do any sort of transition — from their cell to the cafeteria, from the rec room to the yard, et cetera — but after the two months that Gayle has already spent here, the only reason Gayle would be forced to wear them again is if—

“In the visitor’s room.” Gayle rubs her wrists as the clasps come off noisily. “That girl who came to see you. She was super cute, by the way.”

With the clattering alarm system she had on her, it was a wonder Lena didn’t even see her in there.

“You look cozy,” Lena says in lieu of an answer. “Don’t hunch your shoulders so much with those on, it’ll wreck your back.”

“Little late for that.” On cue, Gayle rolls her neck, and Lena could empathize with the soreness. The guard who’s escorted her in takes his leave, and Gayle comes to join Lena at one of the plastic folding tables farthest from the TV.

Lena has a small but pressing stack of cards in her pocket, and she’s just about to take them out when Gayle asks again, “So who was that?” 

There’s nothing Lena needs to particularly hide about Kara, but there’s nothing she cares to disclose either. It would give both irritable blondes too much credit if she did.

“Just a friend.” Now that she thinks about it, she doesn’t remember Gayle having anyone on her approved visitor’s list yet. She resists narrowing her eyes. “Who were you seeing?”

“Oh, you know. Just a friend.”

Lena glances at her, and Gayle is smirking. 

“I didn’t know you were allowed contact visits,” Gayle goes on. 

Lena’s not one for counting strikes, but something about this is another flag on her attention, and coming so close on the tail of the last one only makes her… _suspicious_ isn’t quite the right word. _Unsettled_ would give Gayle too much credit for being anything but a nuisance. Foreboding, maybe. Like whatever foolish mistake Gayle is guilty of is yet to come, and it’s only Lena’s instinct that something isn’t exactly right.

“Is there a reason you would know that?” Lena asks, her smile like old glue on her mouth. She’s not worried about spooking the girl — it’d be more out of character for Lena to not challenge every question Gayle throws at her.

Gayle shrugs. “I dunno. I thought I read somewhere that people in without parole are restricted to no-contact.”

“Not in California.”

“Oh.”

Maybe the brevity of their conversation should be enough to quell _whatever_ it is that lingers like a moth in her stomach, but another part of her — a shadow of an ego too astute for her own good — finds it all the more foreboding that the woman with the attention span of a toddler (and the curiosity of a dozen), for once in the few months they’ve known each other, has nothing else to say.

The cards are prominent in her pocket, but against her original plan, Lena does not mention them.

—

“I hope you’re not waiting for me.”

Kara nearly drops her presenter notes in surprise, and she shuffles to keep their proper order. She’s standing at the back of the lecture hall, on the highest row with her back to the wall, and the rest of the class has already taken their seats. 

She doesn’t know when Cat Grant appeared at her side, but she has, with a latté in hand and a pair of sunglasses pushing back an elegant tapestry of blonde curls. 

“I was, actually,” Kara says.

“I’m not giving you an introduction. You’re a big girl, you know what to do.”

“Oh.” Kara swallows, licks her lips. “Right.”

She can feel Cat’s studious eyes, and however embarrassed Kara is for being glued to where she stands now, she can’t will her feet to move.

“Some people say it helps to pretend they’re not real.”

Kara turns. “What?”

“When you’re presenting an objective analysis of a crime like this, some say it can help to imagine you’re discussing a fictional case. Character from a favorite book, whatever.”

She swallows, her throat dry. “Is that what you say?”

A slow, steady smirk pulls Cat’s lips to one side, subtle but effective. “On occasion. Tick-tock, Kiera.”

“Are you… just going to stand here?”

Her professor lets out a sigh like she’s taken to running a daycare instead of teaching a class. “No, I’m going to fetch a gluten-free turkey wrap from Barnie’s and then wait patiently in the hall for you to finish up.”

Kara hesitates, because there has been two instances this semester where Cat threw up her hands and handed the class over to one of the students so she could leave for an early lunch break. Both times had been just when they were covering a simple debriefing, but Kara finds she can’t rule out that Cat Grant wouldn’t do the same for a final exam. It’s not like anything in Kara’s presentation would come as a surprise, given how often Kara had been in her office this week to discuss her essay.

But still.

Cat sighs again, and she raises her voice this time to be heard by the room. “Are you going to go up there, or do I need to call Mr. Olsen up here to hold your hand?”

Okay, she really shouldn’t need this much prompting.

There’s a few snickers among the room as Kara shuffles down the aisle to the front of the lecture hall, wrinkling her notes by the sheepish clench of her fists around them. She doesn’t look up until she’s reached the podium, and she resists seeking James’s eye out in the assembly if only because having a reputation for needing a friend to coddle her through public speaking is mortifying. It was literally one time, for the record. Kara stumbled and needed a pep-talk from James _one time_ , in a class that wasn’t even this one, and she hates that Cat Grant herself knows about it.

She clears her throat. “Hi.”

The competitive rivalry at NCU Law is not quite as intense as Kara had expected it to be before she enrolled, and despite her stage-fright, her fellow classmates are usually not vindictive for something like this. In fact, Kara has the cold suspicion that most of them are impatient for her presentation. It reminds her of the fanatics that Lena had mentioned, people with morbid curiosity for the grisly murders.

It’s Kara’s own fault, really. She chose Lena, and she carries this now.

She just had to start with the facts. Kara had read this brief so many times it was like reciting a pledge she’s studied for years.

“ _November fifth, 2004, at approximately five o’clock p.m., the defendant was seen arriving home with the now-deceased Lillian Luthor according to sworn testimony by the security groundskeeper at the estate’s front gate. The defendant was engaged in a heated argument with her mother, and security footage shows the two women exiting the towncar and entering the house. The now-deceased Lionel and Lex Luthor are seen arriving home at half-past six o’clock. The groundskeeper and other workers on the Luthor property leave for the night by eight o’clock._

_“At 11:42 p.m., two city officers responded to several complaints of the defendant as a “suspicious woman” riding the Blue Wing Transit north out of National City. She was wearing jeans and an NCU hoodie, both covered in dark red stains, with matching smears across her face and hands. Upon their arrival at the northmost Dickens Street bus stop, the officers asked the defendant to step off the bus, and she complied. The defendant was clearly rattled but seemed otherwise of sound mind. The officers asked her a series of questions, during which she identified herself as Lena Luthor and informed that she was on her way to see former schoolmate and friend Samantha Arias. Per the urgency of the 911 complaints, medical personnel were also sent to meet the officers and they arrived at this time. Upon question whether she was injured, she failed to provide a direct answer. The paramedics were concerned about a state of shock, but upon physical examination and other various psychological inquiries, the paramedics concluded that the defendant was lucid for interrogation._

_“The officers resumed questioning of the defendant. They next asked her if she knew whose blood was on her clothes. The defendant said, “My mom’s, I guess.”_

_“With reasonable suspicion of injury for the defendant’s mother, additional law enforcement and medical personnel were sent to the defendant’s home. Upon entering, the body of the deceased Lex Luthor was found in the front foyer at the bottom of the stairs. Paramedics declared DOA. Two officers swept the bottom floor and two swept the second floor. Lillian Luthor was found on the floor of the east-side hallway in a smeared pool of blood in brutal condition. Lionel Luthor was found still in bed, supine and eyes open. Paramedics also declared both DOA._

_“The defendant Lena Luthor was taken into custody upon a radio-report back of the scene to officers holding her_.”

Kara swallowed another deep breath like she was on limited supply. “This is a sensitive case for our school. I understand that. Lionel Luthor was a respected figure in this city, and he made great advancements for California’s criminal system.”

She pauses. Despite how many hours Kara poured into preparing for this presentation, how much of her week was consumed with her final exam studies, the most pressing thought on her mind has stayed on the fact that Lena still hasn’t called her back. She’s not sure if she should still be expecting her to after everything that happened. Despite every sign and setback that today will be the last day she discusses the Luthor murder case, she still can’t tear herself away from the intuition that this is far from over.

“But I’m here to tell you today that based on the insufficient evidence submitted in court, the ambiguous defense arguments, and the inconclusive testimonies, the sentence assigned to Lena Luthor is not one concerned with achieving justice, but instead in closing a high-profile case as quickly as possible.”

— 

“We need to hurry up.”

Lena doesn’t look up from the desk, and flips to the next page idly.

“Did you hear me?” the guard, Smith, huffs. “We don’t have much time.”

While this is colloquially considered Morgan’s office, it’s still the communal workspace for all senior COs, so it’s not uncommon either way for officers other than Morgan to be coming through. Or, as is officially scheduled right now, for a junior CO to use the office to handle Lena’s "payroll concerns."

Finally, she does meet Smith’s eye, but he’s still struggling to untangle a small sack of plastic that is threaded into the inside of his shirt, the woven strings awkwardly knotted.

Lena rolls her eyes and abandons the folder for now. “Oh, Jesus.” She tugs on his shirt until he stands close enough for her to get a better look at the threads. He’s practically mutilated it, pulled so hard on the superficial patch that it’s torn into the original shirt. He won’t be able to use this one again for smuggling product in. 

“We're only short on time because you can’t undo a standard-issue sheet bend knot,” she mutters. “You act like this is your first time.”

“It is.”

She gives a harsh tug that makes him curse, tearing one of the strings to undo his mess, before giving him an impatient stare. “Cute, but I know where you were transferred from. The amateur card won’t last you very long here.”

It’s really only because she knows he has a reputation for spineless prudery from the last facility he worked at that she also knows she can get away with provoking him so blatantly. Smith is ridiculously generic, and the only reason he was transferred here was because he is so easy to mould. Morgan never can resist a good, quiet sheep.

At last, she withdraws the vacuum-sealed baggie from a concealed, sewn-in pocket. 

“There, that wasn’t so hard.” She pats his shoulder mockingly. “Now where’d you put the rest of it?”

He’s fixing his disheveled buttons, clearly miffed with her attitude, but for his credit he doesn’t lash out. “That’s all they gave me.”

“One parcel,” Lena says flatly. “They gave you… one.”

“What, you think I’m hiding any more of that shit on me? My body’s a temple.”

She gives him a once-over, more rhetorical than anything, before turning back to the papers on the desk. “Yes, I can really see all the self-respect you have for yourself. Congratulations. But I can’t do anything with this, this is three balloons at best. Where’s Morgan?”

“He had to leave early.” He adjusts his collar, standing taller and looking pathetically pleased with himself. “He trusted me to handle this for him.”

“Okay, then how about you _handle_ the problem that I’m supposed to deliver four of these tonight alone, forget about tomorrow.”

“Look, I don’t know what to tell you, alright? Officer Edge had me pickup from the outsource, and he said whatever we got is whatever’s left from the cycle. He said it might be a little short this week.”

Lena licks her finger and turns another page. “You heard him wrong, then. We’re not part of a cycle line because we’re the only one’s operating in this region. So no one else should be getting anything before we do.”

The guard chuckles, a gravelly, uncomfortable sound. “And your info’s outdated, sweetheart. Centinela’s the start of our route now.”

“What? Since when is Centinela operating?”

“Eh. Couple months ago now.”

Lena stops short, and a hot lump swells in her throat. She hadn't found what she was looking for, but she hastily tucks away the visitor approval forms she’d been skimming over and rounds about the desk for the filing cabinets against the wall. Originally, she’d been looking for who had submitted an application to see Gayle and when, but a terrible hunch has occurred to her.

“Look, we don’t have time for this right now, we gotta—”

“Then watch the fucking door if you’re so worried,” Lena snaps, yanking open a second cabinet. “But if Morgan’s gone for the day and left you to handle this pickup, then that means you’re the only junior officer in the offices until four, and the senior COs have no interest in handling paperwork until Monday. And don’t even get me started on just how many of them would turn a blind eye to us right now.”

He hovers by the door anxiously, glancing both ways down the hall out the window, but he hesitates at her words, slow to process. “That means…?”

“We’re alone, so you can shut up and let me think.” Cooling her panic, she adds, “I just need a few minutes, alright?”

She expects it to take longer to find, almost wishes that the answer to her search would be so buried in layers of unnecessary jargon and red tape that it’d be impossible to really tell what happened. The ambiguity of it all could be enough consolation that maybe she’s wrong. 

But it’s not, and all it takes is one transfer form and the clean subtitle beneath it.

Veronica Sinclair, transferred to Centinela the first week of October after spending nine days in solitary confinement. According to the form, it was over a violent altercation on the courtyard, and after being taken off vacation she supposedly made an escape attempt. Whatever that means. They could take a spilled pudding cup on a guard’s shoe and stamp it as attempted diversion.

When Veronica was here, she was on two life sentences for a thirty-year sentence for arms trafficking, among other things, but she had a prospective release — however far off that it was. Lena doesn’t need to see the sentence adjustment order to know what this means, to understand they fabricated a bullshit violation just to increase her sentence, to remember that there was no altercation in the yard and no escape attempt. Not without Lena knowing about it.

Because Veronica was right, Lena realizes with a slow, sickly horror, and Lena was too. 

It doesn’t do anyone well to be in Lena’s good graces, to learn the trade, to learn how to oil out all the kinks that this heinous operation could never settle on its own. Lena can know all the answers, and she can know all about the import routes and substance outsourcing into this corrupt fucking empire, but that omnisience still does nothing but secure her own execution. 

_Don’t ask Luthor questions_ , Veronica had told Gayle the last day Lena saw her. 

_But you said she knows everything,_ Gayle replied.

 _Exactly. That’s exactly why you don’t ask her_.

They only need one thing from someone to run point in a facility, and that’s to be Lena. They don’t ask for much, and in return you have all the secrets you could ever need for the cracks and crevices this place works between. 

It’s just your life, really. That’s all they ask. 

But there’s a reason that a life sentence and a death sentence both entail the same thing.

Lena taught Veronica everything, and they loved that. They loved it so much they transferred her to run her own facility, and they upped her sentence all so they could keep her. 

—

Kara’s never had this much trouble finding a Christmas present for Alex, not even when she was broke in her undergrad living off canned tuna and crackers and Alex was attending med school across the country. Even at her lowest, even at their farthest apart, there had always been a synchrony between them.

It’s not that Kara couldn’t afford anything better.

“Oh, thanks.” Alex holds up the brain-shaped candle, head tilted to one side like she was still struggling to figure out what exactly it was. “I love it.”

It was on sale at the party store. It smells like bubblegum and laundry detergent.

When Kara was seventeen, she bought Alex something similar to one of those kits for growing an animal just by leaving it in water, but instead it was a _Grow a Boyfriend!: Got a single friend who’s looking for a winter boyfriend? Her wish for a man this Christmas may just come true with this Grow a Boyfriend novelty toy. The perfect man really does exist._

So, a gag gift, obviously. Upon unwrapping it, Alex had _howled_ with laughter. The point had probably been in how awful of a present it was, how Kara must’ve known Alex well enough to so easily pick something she’d hate, and Alex had had no problem back then telling her that it was easily the cheapest and most useless cop-out of a present she’d ever been given.

Alex’s smile was forced now, such polite gratitude for a candle that smells like plastic.

Christmas this year is an intimate affair, as Kelly keeps trying to put it. Eliza and Jeremiah are in Europe on a spontaneous, all-expenses-paid trip for the holidays, and all their other friends are with their own families. It’s just Alex, Kara, Kelly, and James this year. There once was a time that this ensemble would have Kara cackling with joy.

It’s not that it’s going poorly, or anything. It could be worse. The rum is as cheap as the egg nog, and the frozen Trader Joe’s meals thawing in the oven still make for a better holiday meal than anything else Kara eats.

But Kelly and James are laughing together on the sofa, huddled together and giggling like children over the useless trinkets they’ve gifted each other this year, and Kara sits on an armchair at one end of the room while Alex is far across, perched on the arm of the couch beside Kelly. The divide between the two sisters is about as far as it could go, within reason.

Kara misses what gets said, drifting somewhere in a distracted melancholy, but she’s yanked back down to the moment when James says to Alex:

“Oh, come on, you must have the right connections for that. Right, Kara?” James laughs, taking a sip of his drink, giving a playful wink over the lip of his glass.

Alex beats her to it. “What do you mean?”

James wipes the eggnog from his mouth with the back of his hand. “I mean, you hooked Kara up with the autopsy reports from the Luthor murders, right? Her presentation for Cat. Kara talked about some inconsistencies with the reports and the case file, and she refused to tell us how she got them, but I’m assuming that was you.”

Kara meets Kelly’s eye in a panic, but Kelly just looks sorely disappointed, and that just makes Kara’s stomach twist harsher.

“What? No, of course I didn’t. Wait— How the _hell_ did you get a hold of autopsy reports?” Alex asks, turning to Kara. 

Kara barely refrains from burying her face in her hands. “I… asked a friend.”

“You didn’t tell her.” 

She’s never seen Kelly upset, much less angry, and so the stern set of her mouth is enough.

“Tell me what?” Alex presses, looking between all three of them. James must have realized he’s said something he shouldn’t have, because he hides himself in his drink with wide eyes playing ping-pong, watching the scene unfold.

“It’s really not a big deal,” Kara says.

Alex finally catches Kelly’s hard-set frown. “You’re kidding, right?”

“She told me she was going to tell you,” Kelly murmurs, but Alex has narrowed her sharp gaze on Kara.

“Really? Not only did you go behind my back, but you enlisted Kelly to steal confidential documents for you too? For— what, your weird obsession?”

“Behind your back? You have no say over what I do on my own time, for _my_ assignment, so don’t start now acting like this is any of your business.”

Kelly’s rubbing her temple. “That’s probably not what she—”

“It becomes my business when my baby sister forces my girlfriend to steal for her.”

“ _Borrow_ ,” Kelly emphasizes, uselessly if only because the heat of a Danvers argument blinds out everything else.

“Why?” Alex asks, but the authoritative glint softens in her eyes, and she drops her shoulders in annoyance. “Fine, whatever. You want benefit of the doubt? Then tell me what the hell was so important for your presentation that you needed Kelly to get this for you?"

Kara’s never enjoyed keeping secrets, never felt like she had to from her sister anyway. But something about withholding everything she’s been doing with Lena from Alex just… taints what they have now. It makes Kara face more directly why it is that she’s slow to meet Alex’s eye, why Alex herself reacts to Kara’s emotional withdrawal with one of her own.

All the reasons Alex wouldn’t understand why Kara’s doing what she is are all reasons that they haven’t been _them_ for so long now, way before Lena came in the picture, and that is so far away from anything Kara wants to admit.

Justifying it is not going to fix anything, but Kara is so tired of lying to her.

“Her case file wasn’t giving me enough to work with,” Kara explains. “Her millionaire defense was weak, the state prosecution was brutal, and I didn’t trust that the file was giving me the whole picture. I figured that if I could cross-reference the autopsy with the file, then it’d just shed some light on whether I was on the right track or not.”

Alex, to her credit, doesn’t go back to yelling. “And did it?”

Kara clenches her jaw. “A little.” Not enough.

“It definitely corroborated that everything with the trial was just weird,” James interjects, glancing hesitantly between the two sisters like stepping on eggshells, trying to help. “I didn’t read it or anything, but from what Kara said, it wasn’t a thorough report. And—” He looks to Kara for confirmation. “The injection was off too, right?”

Before Kara can agree, Alex scoffs a laugh. “Oh, you came to that conclusion all on your own, did you? With all your vast medical training?”

“Babe, come on,” Kelly says quietly, her hand dropping to Alex’s knee, but the Danvers sister shoots her girlfriend a warning look.

“Don’t. You—” Alex reins it in, softer but still strained. “We’ll talk about this later.”

“I don’t need your _vast medical training_ to do basic research. What, you think I got into law school not knowing how to analyze subjects I don’t understand?”

“Playing your logic games is hardly the same as spending a decade studying the body and everything that can go wrong with it.”

“I don’t need a decade, I need to read one report. And coroners don’t even need a doctorate to write an autopsy, so why should I need one to read one?”

“And if you had an M.D., then you’d know that medical examiners perform autopsies when it concerns a police investigation.”

As begrudging as she is to get Alex involved when she knows that her sister is clouded by her bias, Kara can’t ignore that Mike was probably right, and Alex _is_ a beneficial set of eyes.

Pulling her bag out from behind the couch, Kara fishes out the right papers and stuffs them into Alex’s hands. “Fine, if you think I’m so incapable of reading it, then _you_ look me in the eye and tell me there’s any kind of anatomical reason for using a syringe to inject poison into someone’s mouth.”

“She carries the Luthors’ autopsies in her purse?” James whispers to nobody in particular.

Alex looks like she’d rather do just about anything other than read the details of Lionel Luthor’s murder, but she eventually casts her eye down to the report. Her quick eyes skim over the front summaries. It’s hard to appreciate her sharp focus on something so important to Kara when she knows she’s more intent on proving a spiteful point than helping her. 

The silence that follows, filled only by the faint shuffle of James nervously shifting in his seat and Alex turning pages, holds about as much suspense as Kara would have expected. Something about the simplicity of being right feels essential to the precarious balance of her and Alex’s relationship.

“Oh, huh. That’s lucky.” 

Kara doesn’t hide her anticipation and is back at Alex’s side in an instant. “What is?”

“Well, alright, so there’s this condition called trigeminal neuralgia, and in some cases it’s treated by making an incision—” Alex pauses to hold a hand to the back of Kara’s jaw behind her ear. “—here to access the nerve.”

“And that’s lucky, how?”

“The incision spot is right but the angle of the needle is wrong; it shot too low so it missed it by a mile. Or well, a mile as far as the face goes. And damage to the trigeminal nerve, usually a neuralgia, is up there as one of the most painful human experiences.”

"How is that lucky? Because it was so far off from the nerve? It could just have been a coincidence that it’s the same entry point.” Normally Kara wouldn’t be one to play devil’s advocate on Lena’s case — not _against_ her when the odds are already stacked so high — but she can’t get her hopes up when she’s not even sure what point Alex is trying to make.

Alex bites her lip as she tears her eyes away from the page, staring sightlessly at the wall. Her fingers began twitching like they do when she’s trying to visualize a procedure in her head, but she only looks more confused as she goes on. Wordlessly, she shuts the file and dashes out the room, leaving Kara to follow after her, leaving Kelly and James alone.

“What— where are you going? Can I have that back, please?”

“No.” Down the hall, Alex turns into her office study and makes for the wall of prized models behind her desk.

“I know you’re really proud of all your statues, but I really need to—”

“I miss when you were twelve and didn’t talk so freaking much,” Alex mutters, just loud enough for Kara to hear her, who gives only a _hmph_ in return. “Just give me a second, okay?”

After a quick scan over her shelf, Alex picks off one of the human-head models, this one with its flesh rather than any of the bare skull replicas. She sets it down firmly on her desk, and with a quiet curse, drops to her knees and begins rummaging through her drawers.

“Can I just say—”

“No.” 

A cloud of clatter, rustling items and papers being shoveled around, fills the office, and the suspense is transitioning into irritated confusion, but just before Kara can interrupt again, Alex reemerges with a triumphant laugh and slams another anatomic model onto her desk.

“Ah, _there_.”

Looking entirely too pleased with herself, Alex holds her hands out to what seems to just be a particularly old, juvenile model of a monkey skull. It looks more like a toy than anything with an actual medical use.

Kara shoots her a skeptical look. “Am I supposed to know what you’re trying to tell me? Or should I just guess?”

Alex rolls her eyes and just waves Kara over to join her on her side of the desk. 

“Okay, just look at this. If I was going to perform a microvascular decompression to treat the neuralgia, I’d make the incision here.” She points to just behind the model’s ear. She then pries off a layer of the model, stripping the right side of its skin like a toy block and revealing a layer of what looks like brightly colored veins and vasculature. “If I’m taking a linear route to access the nerve, I’ll use the superomedial corridor, which puts me at about this angle.” Alex demonstrates an angle that’s more or less horizontal with the incision, pointing towards the bridge of the nose. “This takes me straight to the nerve, make sense?”

“Uh, sure.”

“Yes or no, Kara.”

“Okay yes, but I don’t understand what this has to do with Lena. Or the monkey.”

“I’m not saying it _does_ have anything to do with Lena, but I’m not saying it doesn’t, either. And it’s not a monkey, it’s a central chimpanzee.”

“I don’t know what’s harder to believe, that you were determined for so long to become a vet and didn’t, or that you still have this at all. I mean, how old is that thing?”

“I got it for my sixteenth birthday—”

“So, old.”

“—but that’s so not the point. You want to keep listening or should I go back to yelling at you?”

“Fine, tell me all about this monkey that has nothing to do with Lena.”

“You are so lucky you have me,” Alex mutters, but she turns her attention back to the chimp model. “Okay. For a dozen different reasons, a chimpanzee’s jawline is flatter than a human’s, and their facial plane is less vertical, hence the muzzle.” 

“Cool.”

“In a chimpanzee, the trigeminal nerve is pretty much in the same place relative to the sinuses,” Alex explains, pointing along the model to demonstrate, “but unlike in humans, it runs parallel to its jawline. So if, for whatever god-only-knows reason, I wanted to perform the same procedure on a chimpanzee, the jawline makes for a good metric to run the angle by, because it’s nearly horizontal. You see?”

“I’m not really having the _a-ha_ moment you want me to be having.”

With another impatient sound under her breath, Alex pushes the monkey aside again and picks back up the human skull. “Let’s just say, for the sake of assuming I’m right, that Lena _was_ aiming for the nerve when she injected the poison.”

The nonchalant way she says Lena’s name makes Kara grit her teeth. “She didn’t do it, Alex.”

That same tension between them resurfaces, and Kara can see Alex weighing which way to tip their balance. Like someone who’s struggling to swallow a thick pill, Alex says, “Whoever it was, assume they were aiming for the nerve.”

Kara’s grateful for the attempt, at least. “Okay, and?”

“Why would she—”

“ _They_.”

“—do that?”

Kara sighs and makes a vague gesture. “If messing with that nerve is so painful on its own, then… to maximize pain, I guess? But there was also a paralytic in his system, so why would someone slip him a sedative if they wanted to torture him?”

Alex bites her lip and takes the file back again, flipping to the toxicology report. After a moment, she flicks the page. “Ah, perfect. It was succinylcholine. It’s a sedative, but not an anesthetic. It’s a muscle relaxant they use in emergency procedures, but it doesn’t have any actual numbing properties.”

Maybe Alex proving her wrong — that Kara does need a trained medical professional to catch these subtle details — isn’t so bad after all.

“Okay, so that’s worse, then, right?” Kara asks. “If they were aiming for the nerve, but they paralyzed him first.”

“All the pain in the world, and not one finger to lift and stop it.”

Kara runs a hand through her hair, struggling to piece it all together. “I still don’t get what this has to do with the monkey thing.”

“I told you I don’t know if it does. I’m just showing it to you because that’s how I noticed it at all.”

“But noticed _what_?”

“The angle of the injection. If she did it in a chimpanzee, she probably would’ve hit the nerve. On a human — well, obviously it didn’t. The point is she was probably aiming for the trigeminal nerve, which explains your problem of why the hell he was injected in that spot in the first place.”

Kara’s too tired to keep correcting pronouns. “That’s not the explanation I wanted.”

Alex smirks, though sardonic. “Now you really sound like a prosecutor.”

“That just raises more questions than it even answers,” Kara says, exasperated. “She’s a lot of things, Alex, but she’s not a sadist. I can tell she’s not. And before you say it—” She holds up a finger as Alex opens her mouth. “—that’s not just my opinion of her. I read the psych exam in her case file, and once the shock wore off, she showed plenty of remorse.”

“And who would show remorse for something they didn’t do?” 

“Gee, I don’t know, maybe someone who was traumatized by the grisly murders of her entire family and coming down from a high only to realize she was the main suspect.”

“Oh right,” Alex said sarcastically. “Remorse for getting high, maybe?”

Kara growls in frustration. “Why are you refusing to see my side of this? Why can’t you just admit that everything about this case is weird?”

“Because it’s already over!” That same twinge of real annoyance from the living room down the hall burns back into Alex’s words. “She’s not your friend, Kara, and she never was. I know you’ve always had a savior complex, but you can’t save a girl who’s already good as dead.”

A burn pricks behind her eyes, from embarrassment or anger she doesn’t know, but Kara holds steady. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“This isn’t me trying to pick a fight with you.”

“Then what are you trying to do?”

Alex sighs, and for a moment, the sudden fatigue around her eyes makes her look so much older. 

“I’m trying to convince you to give up before you get hurt.”

There was a time, once, where Alex would have swallowed glass before telling Kara to ever give up on anything. These words now don’t quite hurt exactly, but they make her chest tighten and her ears feel hollow.

“Well I’m not giving up,” Kara says. “So you can help me or not, but I’m doing this with or without you.”

Not for the first time, Kara wishes Kelly were here to relieve this tension, to translate and mediate between them since they are apparently incapable of it themselves. The only thing Kara can read from Alex’s indiscernible expression is that she doesn’t understand what Kara’s saying at all. She doesn’t know when that happened — when they stopped knowing how to confide in each other without one of them spiralling out of their minds with irritation. People always said that their relationship was strange, that most siblings shouldn’t be so close and reliant on each other, that it was _unusual_ for them to be so rhythmically in sync. 

Maybe it all is finally catching up with them. Maybe this twisted, frustrating imbalance between them that makes communication so impossible is what all siblings have. Maybe they haven’t lost their way, but they’ve just finally succumbed to the pattern all family eventually comes down to. 

Maybe growing apart was inevitable.

She just wishes she knew when it happened. When she stopped recognizing the person she was looking at, or when she saw that same bewilderment reflected back at her.

“This is not me arguing for the sake of it,” Alex says thickly, “but didn’t Lena have some kind of medical background?”

The careful way Alex chooses her words hurts more, like the gentle gratitude for a shitty present, and Kara has to blink away her stinging eyes to focus on the case at hand. 

“She had just started at NCU Med that summer,” Kara says. “She was kicked out before the end of the first term.”

“For what?”

“Does it matter?” At Alex’s withering look, Kara rolls her eyes. “Drugs, allegedly.”

“Okay so, coming fresh from med school, it makes sense she’d have a basic understanding of human anatomy, enough to know what she’s targeting, but too inexperienced to hit her mark.”

“But exactly, _human_. You just said that whoever did this probably was more familiar with veterinary anatomy or whatever.”

“‘Veterinary anatomy isn't— Okay, whatever.” Alex leans back with crossed arms. “It’d be wishful thinking to even ask if Lena had some special affiliation with primate studies, right?”

And just like that, Kara’s stomach sinks, turns low with cold nausea.

Alex recognizes the look on her face before she can answer. “What is it?”

“She does,” Kara says. “We— we talked once about it. I told her chimpanzees have their own fashion trends, and she said she already knew. She knew that, because—”

_Oh my god._

As quickly as her stomach had sunk, it now lurches into her mouth like an acid reflux, both in alarm and excitement, and Kara nearly gasps with the sudden realization. It’s a miracle she doesn’t drop to the floor in surprise.

“Because what?”

“Lex,” Kara says, mouth dry. “She told me, in one of our letters, when I was talking about the fashion trend thing—”

“You said that.”

Kara looks at her sister, and it’s impossible to tell the difference between horror and relief in her own chest because it must be some concoction of the two.

“Her brother. He studied veterinary biology in school. She said he used to have a thing for primates. It had to have been him then, Alex. He had to have been the one who killed them, and that means she’s innocent.”

Alex’s expression evens out herself as she understands the conclusion Kara’s drawn, but it’s when her sister grimaces that the ensuing realization dawns.

Quieter, a cruel and miraculous lump in her throat, Kara says: “So, unless someone else was there, then… she did kill him.”

“What is this?”

Kara crosses her arms self-consciously. “I told you I had a theory.”

Mike’s smile is weak, like he can’t tell if he’s supposed to take her seriously or not. A regular expression for him.

“You wrote up your own brief?” 

“Yeah.”

“And this isn’t your essay?” he presses. 

“No. I— I don't know. I mean, it’s far-fetched, I know that. And maybe I’m an idiot to think I could actually solve anything, but I know she didn’t do it and that… that was the best I could come up with.” She rubs her forehead tiredly. “I don’t know if I’m even going to do anything with it. The whole thing’s probably a joke. And Lena’s made it plenty clear she doesn’t care what I think.”

It’s not a slip of the tongue, but she realizes she hadn’t mentioned this to Mike so frankly yet, and he gives her a stunned look. “Wait, you talked to her about this? That you what, think she’s innocent?”

What even is innocence? Does it always look the same? Is the law really what decides?

“Sort of.” Kara looks down. “She wasn’t really interested in it.”

“In an appeal?”

“In talking about it. So, yes, probably also in an appeal.”

Mike blows an exaggerated breath between his lips, leaning back in his chair. They’re in his apartment for once. To put it bluntly, they’re only there because Kara wanted him to look over her brief before he went in tomorrow, and Monday nights were always an early turn-in for him. She only finished writing up the thing an hour ago after spending the better part of the last two days in the library elbow-deep in more research. Ever since the Christmas debacle with Alex, Kara’s been charging deeper for answers.

So that meant crossing into the threshold of Mike’s crisp southside studio on a Sunday night. Though the size was modest, the furnishings were lush and the neighborhood itself seemed adamant in declaring its premium status, even if it wasn’t explicitly its own compound. Kara felt out of place here, like something accidentally picked up from a thrift store.

“What do you want to do with this, then?” he asks. “File an appeal? Habeas petition? Re-trial?”

“I don’t know,” she repeated. “She hasn’t called since I last saw her, and I know I can’t just show up unannounced and expect to see her. For all I know she’s already talked all this over with a real lawyer and she’s just tired of it, ready to lay it all to rest.”

Mike licks his lips, sitting forward again. He flips through a few pages of her brief, his cool eyes skimming the pages with the expert eye of someone who’s read thousands. 

“How about this,” he says. “I’ll look it over, see if you’ve got a good basis for an appeal, and if you do then I’ll show it to my dad.”

Mike’s father mostly works in contract law, but the field led to an extensive network of contacts with legal professionals all over the state. He had been the one to put Mike in touch with the professor he worked for now, which led to nepotism being a sore topic between the two of them. 

“If he agrees there’s something to it then we can figure out what to do from there, alright?” He ducks his head to catch her eye, and she reluctantly meets it.

She isn’t using him, not if it’s something he himself comes up with, even if this is the exact course of action she’d been hoping he’d suggest. No influence or guided persuasion, just his own words.

Her theory is just that, anyway. A young girl’s idealizations about criminal scandals she likely doesn’t understand.

— 

“You haven’t talked about Kara in a while.”

Lena, her chair scooched up close enough to the front of Andrea’s desk so she can prop her elbows on it, feels her shoulders instinctively clench up.

“And to think we were having such a good time,” Lena says dryly. “But you had to go and ruin it.”

Andrea laughs, a cute, startled sound. Lena revels in this version of her — the Andrea that leans back in her chair like she would at home, hair still loose from her lunch break because she never bothered to put it back up when Lena came into her office. Her lipstick has rubbed off in parts, probably from whatever she ate. Her smile is soft, and Lena wonders if this is what she looks like at the end of her day when she settles on her couch, if this is the sight whatever boyfriend or girlfriend she lives with gets to see.

Lena knows everything about everyone in this building, but the fact she still doesn’t know if Andrea is in a relationship or not is easily at the top of the most frustrating. 

“I thought you liked her,” Andrea says, her lukewarm voice so endeared that Lena knows she must be projecting. “You’ve never had me rush a visitor’s application for you before.”

“Maybe I just wanted an excuse to ask you for a favor.”

“Lena Luthor, keen on asking for favors? From the way people talk about you, I doubt it.”

Lena sits up with a mocking affront. “Why, Ms. Rojas, are you letting prison-yard gossip influence your diagnostic assessments?”

“If you’re waiting for me to diagnose you with anything then you’ll be sorely disappointed,” Andrea laughs. “I like to be aware of my patients’ social reputations. But I am curious, so you can return that favor now by clueing me in on why you’re not talking to Kara.”

They really were having a good time. Not talking about much. Lena would be loath to admit it to anyone, but Andrea’s office was an unbelievable reprieve every now and then from the exhaustion of everything else in this facility. She didn’t always need an introspective issue to talk about in order to see Andrea. Sometimes the counselor simply let things be, and sometimes Lena’s eyes stung solely with the overwhelming relief of it. 

This isn’t what she came in here for, but Lena’s still not eager to return to everything outside that door. To Edge and his cruel arrogance, to Gayle and her prying questions, to the deliveries she has to make tonight and the cards she has to pick up. 

Lena sits back in her chair and resists picking her nails. “She finished her assignment. There’s no reason to keep talking to her.”

“You said she wanted to keep in touch.”

“I should stop telling you so much about my personal life.”

“So she’s part of your personal life now?” 

Lena bites her lip, but she can’t stop a smile. “You know I hate it when you do that.”

“My job?”

“Yes.”

“I’d apologize, but you came to me.” Much to Lena’s dismay, Andrea sits up and scoops her hair up in her hands, tying it back. “Really, talk to me. I thought things were going well. Poor thing looked nervous to all hell out in the lobby when she came to visit you. You know she came an hour early?”

She didn’t know. Lena looks to the window. “She… said some questionable things last time she was here.”

“Like what?”

“She thinks—” Lena bites the inside of her cheek, mulling. “She thinks we can be friends, and that she understands something about me that no one else does. And before you say it, this isn’t about my own self-worth or any stubborn insistence that I deserve to be alone. But she has it in her head that we’re similar on some intrinsic level just because she’s terribly lonely and struggles to open up to people.”

“Aren’t you?”

Lena turns. “What?”

“You _are_ lonely and you _do_ struggle with opening yourself up.”

“That’s different. She’s insecure, and I don’t like people.”

“You like me.”

“Not right now.”

“Alright,” Andrea sighs, sitting up straighter. “But with all you’ve been through, Lena I don’t know that there’s a person in the world who can fully comprehend how you’ve suffered. Isn’t it enough that she sees you as someone to try and connect with still? You say you’re tired of people who want you to teach them how to behave, who see you as someone to show them the way. So if it’s not someone who’s interested in knowing you without receiving anything in return, then what is it? What do you need from someone in order to feel that connection? Because from what you’ve told me about Kara so far, it seems you’re just unwilling to admit how much you _do_ have in common.”

Lena considers telling her about what Kara said, how she thinks her trial was tampered with and Lena doesn’t deserve to be here. 

But maybe the fact that, upon Andrea’s inquiries into Kara, Lena’s first instinct was to talk about communion is telling in itself, and so maybe it’s like Kara said all that time ago. Maybe the assignment and the case can be set aside, because maybe they distract from the core of what really intimately disturbs her here.

— 

It does feel like a miracle when Lena finally calls.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and though there’s still daylight, Lucy and James are already in her living room ripping back Bud Lights. They’re too distracted with their drinking to pay much mind to Kara rushing out of the room to take a call. If Lucy remembers that Kara only set up the landline to talk to Lena, then she doesn’t care about it now.

Kara fumbles through the agreement command, and her breath is short in her chest when she presses the phone to her ear, ducking into her bedroom.

“I need to see you,” Kara rushes out before Lena can get a word in. 

Despite everything, Lena actually chuckles into the phone, though it does fall flat. “ _Well hello to you too. Missing me already? It’s only been… ah. Well. Maybe let’s not go there, then._ ”

This teasing side of Lena plays a hard juxtaposition to the stone-faced, closed off woman Kara left in that visitor’s room three weeks ago, but she doesn’t have the patience to dissect that now.

“Please,” Kara urges. “When’s your next visitation day?”

“ _Is everything alright?_ ”

“Yes, yes.” Kara ducks into her room and presses her back to the door, frustrated with herself and her tangled tongue. “I just really need to talk to you.”

“ _We’re talking now._ ”

She wants to blurt it out, wants to scream it into the receiver, wants to spend hours reciting reason after reason that she knows she can get someone to prove Lena’s life shouldn’t be spent waiting just for the night she dies in her sleep _._ But a twinge in her gut, a restraint at the back of her throat— caution is everything. She needs to choose her words carefully, because aversion can raise just as many flags as any words that are outright incriminating.

“I know. But I’m not… I’m not totally comfortable talking about it over the phone. I just mean, it's kind of personal.”

It’s not entirely a lie. Kara’s been working a lot with those.

“ _Oh._ ” Lena pauses, and Kara can picture the marble reticence of her pensive frown. Eventually she clears her throat and says, “ _What are you doing Monday?_ ”

“Nothing more important than this.” Kara bites her tongue, nearly kicks her foot at the wall. “I mean, wow, no just like— nothing. I’m not doing anything.”

Lena sounds half amused and half wary. “ _Are you sure you’re alright?_ ”

This isn’t really about her, but. “Does that make a difference?”

Lena does sound apologetic when she says. “ _I suppose not, as far as what I could realistically do about it_. _But if it’d give you any peace of mind, you could tell me anyway._ ”

Kara doesn’t deserve that. She screws her eyes shut. “That’s okay. Everything’s fine. I’m— sorry, you called me. Was there something…?”

Lena, as she is prone to do, doesn’t answer right away. There’s a comfort in how that feels familiar, in how Kara can reckon anything about this exchange as normal and expected. It makes her feel less deluded and out of her mind, like this isn’t all just the deranged criminal fantasy Lena had accused her of.

“ _I just wanted to apologize, I guess._ ”

“For what?”

“ _I shouldn’t have snapped at you._ ” Lena laughs, wry and melodic. “ _You know, I wasn’t sure if you’d answer._ ”

Kara softens, tucking her free hand into the pocket of her hoodie. “I thought that was—”

“ _Your thing? Yes, I know. I did too. And yet here I was, standing at the communal phone tapping my foot, wondering if I’d hit a disconnected line._ ”

“I mean that definitely could happen, but if it does then I promise you it’s only because I got too behind on my service bill.”

“ _I’ll keep that in mind_.”

“Good. And um, I appreciate the apology, but you don’t have to be sorry.” 

Lena laughs again. “ _No, I do, and it’s sweet of you to—_ ”

“Really, you don’t.” Kara pauses, as if waiting for Lena to chide her, but nothing comes. “I’m glad you’ll call me out when I overstep. You’re strong enough to know what you deserve, and you’re not afraid to put people in their place. That’s why I— That’s just… one of things I really admire about you.” 

Even if she’s going to do it again, and this means banking on the near-certainty that it will be the last straw for Lena, of everything Kara has learned so far of Lena — this is still her favorite thing about her.

“So don’t be sorry.” Kara clears her throat. “I was honestly just worried I’d never hear from you again.”

“ _I did think about how satisfying it’d be to lose your number. But it wouldn’t sit right with me if I let you have the last word._ ”

Kara lets out a small, relieved laugh. She doesn’t deserve Lena’s good graces right now but it doesn’t mean she won’t cherish it. “So I just need to make sure I say the last thing before I leave, and I’ll never have to wonder if you’re gonna disappear on me? It’s a guaranteed callback, if only to just tell me I’m full of shit?”

 _“Oh yeah, something like that._ ”

Kara’s not being dishonest, and she knows it’s the safest choice to withhold what she wants to say. But she can’t hide that it feels wrong to lean into the ease of this banter, if only because Lena might genuinely never want to see her again when she hears what Kara has to say.

The point still stands — if Lena accused Kara of being a callous groupie just for using imprecise terminology, then she might very well throw Kara out on her ass for saying— anything. Any of what she has to say, and Lena might still condemn her for it.

“I’ll see you Monday, then,” Kara says, unable to entirely expel the feeling that she’s only setting a time for Lena to cut all ties with her.

A final laugh like the swell of a lily. “ _I’ll see you then, Miss Danvers._ ”

[January, 2011]

Kara figures there’s no point in stalling.

When Lena approaches the table, eyes dark and careful as they had been that first day she saw her weeks ago, Kara forces a jovial smile and holds her arms out for a hug. Lena obviously hesitates, because they are not old friends and this is not a customary visit.

Still, to the young Luthor’s credit, she is elegant in playing the part of someone who isn’t surprised. She meets Kara’s embrace with gentle hands. They hover faintly around Kara’s back, hardly even touching her, and Kara hates herself a little bit at pressuring Lena into a hug at all even if it is for good reason.

But trust runs in short supply these days, and Kara is terrified. So she presses her face carefully into Lena’s neck when she hugs her, far enough to not breach any true boundaries but close still to Lena’s ear.

Kara says, low and on the exhale of her easy breath, “I know Lex did it, and I’m going to prove it.”

Again, they’re hardly touching as they pull apart. The granted moment of greeting isn’t usually anything longer than a few moments, half a minute at most.

But even still, Kara can feel how Lena stiffens, how her form cements to stone.

They have to pretend everything is fine. Kara swiftly moves to sit down, still smiling a plastic thing. “My sister works in the medical field, and based on the circumstances for how your father was killed, I have reason to believe it was your brother who killed him.”

Lena sits across from her like an afterthought, absent. The face that stares blankly back at Kara now is the tabletop replica of tabloid photographs — frigid and removed. Kara almost wishes she hadn’t gone straight to the point, that they could spend the first few minutes with pleasantries and maybe see Lena’s smile one more time, but it wouldn’t be right. 

“I had my suspicions about your trial, which you obviously know already, and after we last spoke — after I met with my professor and gave my presentation — I kept looking into your case. I compiled a list of people who could have something to gain from your family’s death. Which didn’t get me all that far, because the only two people who had the most to gain from your parents’ deaths were you and Lex, with your inheritance.”

Lena says nothing, but Kara watches as her eyes sweep over the room around them, surveilling.

“I stopped looking at you, and I started looking at him,” Kara says quietly as she forces her expression to keep friendly, unassuming. “And if I’m right, then there’s more going on here than you just taking the fall for what he did. I wrote a brief with my theory, and I know you’re probably going to hate me for this, but I tried contacting your lawyers. Or well, Mike did, because he has the better connections, but—”

Lena clears her throat. “Mike?”

“Oh.” She’s not sure how discussing a perjured murder case could pale in comparison to the discomfort of her next words, but it does. “He’s… well, he’s my boyfriend. Sort of. Not really. It’s— it’s complicated.”

Why does it feel like owning up to a betrayal? Why does Kara want to dig her heels into the dirt and backtrack as if there’s a misunderstanding she should be fixing here?

“It’s not that serious,” Kara says quickly. “No one even knows about him. Except now you, obviously. And— look, okay, regarding your case I’m not going to do anything without your permission. He’s just making sure that what I wrote up holds any weight to it, because I know I’m a nobody. And I’m not going to pretend I know what I’m doing or that I’m competent enough to understand everything that’s at stake here. He would have a better chance at getting the discovery we need to see how it compares with the court docket. Like, witness statements, evidence, police reports, interviews.”

“So you told him, what? About me?”

Kara wants to tell her _no_ , because Mike knows nothing about how Kara still re-reads those letters from before even now that her semester is over — because he doesn’t know she digs her nails into the seams of her pocket when Lena laughs in her ear — because he doesn’t know the air of her apartment runs with a hot spirit every time Kara so much as hears that landline ring — because he doesn’t know Lena hates squirrels or puts unnecessary weight on old English philosophers — because he doesn’t know how many hours Kara lies awake thinking about this case, about Lena — because he doesn’t know that Kara would sooner tell Alex all about how Lena’s taken reign on such an intimate shelf of Kara’s heart than she would to tell her sister about her relationship with _him_ at all.

He doesn’t know anything, not about that. Just the truth of the parts that matter.

“Yeah,” is all Kara can say. 

“What did you tell him?”

“Enough.”

Lena’s eyes flare as her hands spider out against the table. “What does that mean? I need to know exactly what you told him.”

“I told you. I gave him my brief.”

“Which says _what_?”

Kara’s never done well with her back against the wall.

“It’s my stupid theory for how your entire trial was a joke and how you got yourself into that kind of mess,” Kara whispers frantically. “And it’s my stupid idea that the only way for you to be absolved of your crimes and have your charges reduced to one count of second degree manslaughter is if I can prove your godmother is the one keeping you here.”

Lena’s skin, already so marble and pale, just looks as if it’d be cool to the touch should Kara dare reach a hand out. 

“My godmother,” Lena repeats flatly.

“Mercy Graves.”

“Yes I’m aware of who she is, thank you.”

It wasn’t a lie, Kara thinks. She wasn’t hiding anything from Lena except only a certain nature of the truth, because this is nothing Lena had asked to hear.

“What are you trying to say, Kara?”

“She used to be a judge, did you know that?” Kara asks. “Four years. Then for the next three years she was an investigator with Ventura County’s sheriff’s office. And after that, she was elected to the state legislature, but she lost reelection for her third term in 1995. Year after that, she started working with your father.”

“Don’t start.” For the first time, Lena’s eyes waver like they might well with tears. “Don’t talk about my family like you know the first thing about them.”

“A month ago you were encouraging me to ask you more questions about them, about Lex, and now is when you’ve had enough?”

“Yes, glad we’re on the same page.”

“But Mercy and Lionel had known each other for a lot longer though, right? She’s your godmother after all. That year, ‘96, she became a lobbyist, and from then on she worked _very_ closely with your father.”

“I don’t know if you think you’re clever by reciting a few encyclopedia biographies, but whatever your point is, it’s bullshit.”

“If you really think that, then go,” Kara says hotly. Every instinct in her body was tensing with objection, because playing the role of someone who stands for what they believe in and someone who doesn’t placate their own wishes in the terrifying face of rejection has _never_ been the kind of person she is. Kara has never known how to fight her battles, not when cutting deals and setting unfair compromises has always been the more attractive of choices. 

But this isn’t about her.

“You can get up and leave, but you called me.” Kara holds Lena’s gaze like they’re the only ones in the room. “I’ve only come back because you asked me to, and I think you trust me. I think you know I’m different, and I think you know I’m not just here to scratch at a morbid fascination. Maybe I don’t know you, I’m not gonna try and claim that I do, but you know me. It really doesn’t take much. I’m a ‘what you see, what you get’ kind of person, Lena. So just forget for five seconds whatever assumptions it is you think I’ve made about you. Just think about me. Please, I’ve shown you all I’ve got, and I know it’s nothing impressive, but I am not the adversary you’re against right now.”

Lena stares back at her with unblinking eyes, and it is this fierce look now that Kara finally notices her eyes are green. Olive, pale and acute, they weigh like diamonds. Her ivory eyes like shadows, simply begging for Kara to fall within and lose herself entirely.

“Fine, Kara Danvers,” Lena says with such a slow precision that Kara wonders how much of a battle it must be just to form each sound. “Tell me about who this adversary is, then.”

Kara barely resists a sigh of relief. 

“Not who, but _what_.”

“She’s interested.”

It takes a moment for Mike to understand what she’s said, but when he does, he slouches back in his seat with a relieved laugh. “Were we not sure about that before?” he asks.

They’re at the downtown opening of _La Sobremesa_ , some new rising-star restaurant Mike’s parents have been investing in with the claim that it’ll get it’s Michelin stars within its first year. It’s absurdly out of even Mike’s salary at NCU, forget Kara’s pitiful stipend, but his parents had promised the owners they’d be here tonight. Whether they were sharing a three-figure bottle of wine or discussing over two-buck chuck, it doesn’t matter where they talk about this.

“I mean, kind of,” Kara says. “I haven’t convinced her of anything, and she still hasn’t really told me any more about the events of that night to corroborate what I wrote in my brief, but she didn’t have me thrown out or anything.”

“Not sure she’s got the rights for that.”

“That’s not funny, Mike.”

“Wasn’t a joke. But, okay.” He leans forward again onto the fine linen, scratching idly at his stubble. “So which part did she agree to, exactly?”

“She gave her blessing for us to do— whatever. Keep up our research, contact her lawyers and see if we can get the discovery we need for a full assessment.”

“I’ve already done that.”

“I know, but now I can sleep a little better at night now that I’ve stopped feeling like I’m going behind her back.”

“You have plausible deniability, if it helps,” he says, reaching for his wine. He’s stopped meeting her eye, and she only now notices how his eagerness has subsided.

“Something’s wrong.” Kara flits her eyes over him like the answer can be found in the lapels of his jacket or turn of his frown. “What is it?”

“Okay, look. Don’t be mad.”

“Has prefacing with that ever worked out for you? Just tell me.”

“I sent your brief to my dad like we talked about.”

“Right.”

“And he was compelled about the points you made.”

“I’m surprised, but excited.”

“Okay, I should probably just say it.”

“That’d be a good start.”

Mike reaches for his wine, well into his third glass, and the set of his thin mouth is grim. After carefully letting the liquid swell in his mouth, swallowing slowly, he meets her eye. 

“I told him I wrote it.”

Much like his reaction to Kara’s news, it takes a second for the gravity of what he’s said to sink in. And when it does, a rush of confusion flows.

“I’m sorry,” Kara says. “You what?”

“Look, it doesn’t look great if I’m coming to him with an outlandish conspiracy theory that my law-student girlfriend wrote for a 2L class. If I wanted him to take it seriously, I just… I reprinted the thing with my name on it. Trust me when I say he wouldn’t have bat an eye at it otherwise.”

She’s too stunned to even be mad. “I don’t understand. You told me that the brief hit all the necessary marks to go somewhere, and you showed your dad, and he agreed. But you must have told him by now that the work was mine?”

“I… said your project with Cat inspired me, so it’s not like— I mean, you’re not getting _no_ credit.”

“No, you’re just stealing my work.” Kara clenches her hands around her cutlery if only for something to channel her impending anger into. “You can’t be serious.”

“Okay, come on.” He tugs on his tie, a nervous habit he picks back up any time he fiddles but wants to look serious while he does it. “Look, my fellowship ends this year and I only have so much time to prove I’m a worthy hire to my dad’s firm. I can't just let him vouch for me because I’m his son, I need something to prove I deserve it. And— you know, some of us can’t just sleep with staff members to ensure we have a career.”

As soon as he says it, he curses under his breath and screws his eyes shut.

“Wow.” That suppressed anger has no qualms about surfacing now, but Kara’s recoil is cold. “And some of us don’t need to cheat our way into a job, either.”

“Kara please, don’t make this into a big deal. It’s not like you were about to put this thing on your CV or something anyway, and I thought— don’t you care more about this woman finding justice than just some name on a byline?”

“Justice?” Kara laughs. “Don’t pretend you weren’t beside everyone else in despising _this woman_ when I picked her name. You don’t care about what happens to her. You just said it yourself that the only reason you have any stake in this is to use it so you can make associate at your father’s firm because you graduated three years ago and _still_ nobody wants to hire you.”

They’ve crossed a boundary. He has, she has, and as much as it matters that he did it first, it doesn’t really matter at all. Sitting across from him, the only person who is even close to knowing how much she cares about Lena’s case, but caring so little himself, she has never felt so alone.

Kara stands, pushing from the table. “I’m not doing this right now. I can’t— I can’t even look at you.”

He hurries after her out of the restaurant, and Kara doesn’t even know if he pays their bill before he does or they just simply have his parents’ credit card on file, but he is quick behind her once they’re under the night sky. He catches her arm, still reciting apologies and excuses so jumbled together they’re interchangeable.

“Kara, please, I’m sorry.”

She laughs over her shoulder. “If you want to apologize, you can start by picking up the phone and calling Largand.”

“Why can’t you just be happy for me?”

“Happy for you?” Kara twists to a halt, turning back on him as the blood rushes to her face. “Which part am I supposed to be happy about, exactly? The fact that you used me to kickstart your career, or that the one person I actually trusted to help me couldn’t care less? This is _actually_ important to me, do you get that Mike? 

“If you really just cared about doing the right thing, then you’d have wanted me to do whatever it takes to make sure that brief got into the right hands.”

“And if you cared about anyone other than yourself, this wouldn’t have been your first strategy.”

He opens his mouth to retort, but the words catch in his throat and he closes it again quickly. He scrubs a hand haggardly down his face. The medallion-yellow light that the streetlamps cast over the parking lot is a violent contrast to his crestfallen face.

“Seriously. I don’t want to have a fight about this.”

“Funny how everyone keeps telling me that,” Kara says joylessly. “Right after telling me I’m just a joke to you.”

“C’mon, you know that’s not true. Babe—”

She swats at his outstretched hand, and this is the final stroke. She snaps, “Don’t _babe_ me,” before storming off again.

He shouts after her still, but this time doesn’t follow. She doesn’t want him to anyway. Obviously. She just wants whatever self-satisfying dignity she can retain by walking home with nothing more than a loose cardigan to expel the sharp city chill and some peace and quiet to quell her burning eyes.

She only makes it two blocks before she’s second-guessing her anger, the echo of his words seeping to the forefront of her thoughts like flies she can’t ignore. If this is the best way to get someone’s attention, to get a practicing lawyer interested enough in Lena’s case to do something about it, then maybe—

“Kara, get in the car.”

She startles at his voice, furious all over again if only for how stupidly quiet his dark Volvo is. He’s pulled up on the road beside her, leaning across the passenger seat and inching the car slowly enough along to keep in line with her.

“You look dumb,” is her grand, distinguished response as she keeps her eyes resolutely forward. 

“And you look stubborn and cold,” he calls back. “Please just get in. You shouldn’t be walking around this late.”

“You should’ve thought about that before pissing me off.”

“See if you walk home then you’re missing out on the chance to keep yelling at me. You can rip me apart, okay? Just please let me take you home.”

Kara’s never been good at holding onto a grudge, and it _is_ cold. Not to mention they’ve captured the attention of other city-goers in their arguing, heads turning at the man driving close to the sidewalk and the shivering woman stalking away from him. 

With a stiffly set jaw and crossed arms, she does take back into his car. Though the catch for relinquishing her self-respect is keeping up a headstrong silence.

Mike drums his fingers on the steering wheel, shooting her furtive glances at every stop light and slow crawl through traffic. She clings adamantly to her upset, because she does have every right to it, so she’s thankful he doesn’t fill the space with anymore apologies and excuses. However weak they are. Otherwise she knows she’ll concede all too easily, if only because his selfishness might still lead to the most important goal.

When he does speak, she braces herself, but his words are far from what she expects.

“I know why you haven’t told any of your friends about me,” he says quietly, his voice like background static. “Why I haven’t met your sister yet.”

She doesn’t want to answer. She _can’t_ answer.

“I don’t actually think you’re just sleeping with me for the grades. You’re not even taking any of my classes this year. I don’t know why I said that.”

“Because you’re a jackass.”

He nods, lenient and patient. “I deserve that, yeah.”

His grace is more frustrating if only because she can feel herself slipping.

“I told myself I’d tell them if we ever got serious.” Kara knots her knuckles together, head tucked down. 

“Aren’t we?”

That shouldn’t bite as much as it does, especially because he doesn’t mean anything challenging by it. She can hear his confusion, the echo of hurt. 

“You know, at first I thought you were just skittish,” he says when she doesn’t reply. “Thought some guy had broken your heart or something before we met, and you just had trust issues. Not that I thought I was gonna fix you, but I thought you just needed someone to care about you. That with time it’d all work out.”

The car stops at another red light, just before the freeway. He looks across at her. “I can’t tell if you don’t know what you want, or if you just don’t know how to let yourself want anything.”

Meeting his gaze is a mistake, because it makes the lump in her throat more prominent. The stop light bathes his face red and illuminates his ghostly weariness.

What is she supposed to say to that? When did this go from his spineless plagiarism to a debate on Kara’s stunted emotions and how they drag down everyone around her?

He merges onto the freeway, and the car returns to silence for the next eight long minutes until their exit. She never wanted to hurt him. She never meant for it to come this far, to pull him down into this.

But as he pulls off the freeway, Kara huffs. “Can you please slow down?”

“Sorry, I know— my brakes are just being weird.”

“Mike, seriously.” The ramp off the exit takes a sharp turn up ahead, and every time he drives them this way he always speeds through the curve so fast that it sends her scrabbling for the handle above her. 

“No, really, I’m trying.” He’s shifting restlessly in his seat, and she hears airy pumps and thuds coming down from his feet. “They’re not— fucking _hell_ , they’re not working.”

They’re still barreling seventy past the exit sign, and fear floods her like the bile of nausea. “Stop, seriously this isn’t funny.”

“I’m not—” His voice cracks, a startling sound Kara’s never heard from. “I’m not joking, I really can’t—”

“Mike, I mean it!”

“I swear I’m trying—”

The thumping of his feet against the car floor pounds louder, his panicked breaths whistling through his teeth, and his hands are shaking around the wheel as Kara presses herself tightly back into her seat, hands scrabbling to hold onto something.

She’s never thought much about dying before. She wonders if she should’ve.

At the last second in a reckless lurch of terror, Mike jerks the wheel as they hit the bend in the road, and the tires screech louder than the shout from Kara’s mouth. 

Stomach in her mouth, heart on the floor, the car barrels over, each crunch of the car’s frame blasting out her eardrums. All of the windows except the windshield shatter on the first roll, the roof crumpling in like a sheet of aluminum. Her seatbelt snaps her torso to the seat and her neck pops just before the airbag blasts her back again.

It doesn’t feel a thing like flying, or like time has slowed. She doesn’t know why anyone says it does. 

Something stops the car. It crashes against— a tree, probably, and the car rocks up like it’s tugged up on a crane before it collapses back to the ground in a crumple.

She should’ve passed out. She shouldn't be awake right now. People always say it all goes dark. But the interior of the ruined car comes into jostling focus around her, sharper than the pain spiking through her chest.

She’s upside-down. Her arms dangle towards the ground, the seatbelt and the crushed-in doors are all that keep her suspended. Wrapping her brain around what just happened is like breaking from a smoky haze, a padded room, a frostbite paralysis.

“Mike,” she mumbles. When she swallows, her chest throbs like it’s about to drop to the car roof above her. No— below.

Her eyes burn to keep open, but she can just barely make out the blurry outline of Mike face-down on ground. Half of the roof is torn away, the other half clawed in like teeth, and he’s bent at an awkward angle like the mangled metal is in the way.

“Mike,” she says again, louder, but such a vibration in her throat sparks a cough, and the pain in her chest is so blinding she almost vomits, the acid practically on the tip of her tongue.

He’s not moving. She might be crying. Everything is upside-down, and the pattern of torn shrapnel in front of her obscuring the splintered windshield just looks like a game she forgot the rules too.

 _Oh, here it is_ , Kara thinks. Here’s that darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: there’s a car accident at the end that’s very detailed, so if you’d like to skip it then just stop reading when kara starts to tell mike to slow down after their argument. all you need to know is mike’s brakes stop working and they get into an accident and it’s ,,,, heavily implied he died


	5. the beginning

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PLEASE READ FIRST!! 
> 
> i have made some **significant changes to past chapters** regarding the plot:
> 
>   * lena’s case is **no longer a capital case,** meaning she was not tried for the death penalty and is not on death row. instead, her case is federal (a case tried by a USA district court rather than just by the state) specifically because of the murder charge on lionel, as he was a law enforcement official
>   * she does have a life sentence without parole
>   * and because lena’s middle name is still Dramatic, she does still talk about dying all the time; only difference is now ppl (namely andrea) say back to her like “shut up no you're not”
> 

> 
> a big reason for this change is because the real life stories of people on death row have been significantly erased by fictional stories featuring white people on death row, or by white-savior flicks in disguise. i realized that writing a wealthy, white woman on death row was inappropriate of me to do, because the injustice of the death penalty in the US is a significant racial issue and not one to be dramatized for white characters. specifically, it is Black men in the US that are most often wrongfully put on death row. i am very sorry i didn't do my research better before starting this fic, and from here on out i will work much harder at recognizing the context of what i'm writing, because fanfiction or not, writers should always be aware of the impact their words have. so now, i want to take this fic away from the inappropriate direction of "white woman wrongfully on death row" and instead gear it more towards the classic, simple trope of a "framed for murder" prison drama
> 
> again i want to emphasize that i am incredibly sorry if this is something that anyone noticed or thought about before and it made you uncomfortable or hurt you in any way, because i take full accountability for that, and that is why i have changed the existing chapters as they are to take that storyline out.
> 
> you can look back at chapters for specific line changes, but i noted the significant changes here so it's not necessary to do so before you read on
> 
> if anyone has any comments, questions, or critiques regarding that, my dms on twitter are always open

_“Monsters are always hungry, darling, and they’re only a few steps behind you.”_

_Richard Siken, Crush_

[January, 2011]

Almost immediately after Kara leaves, Lena finds herself bursting breathlessly into Andrea’s office, heart hammering so violently against her ribs that she forgot to pick up any cleaning supplies as an excuse to even be roaming so freely.

Andrea is on the phone when she looks up, standing off to the side of her desk and reading a file from the open cabinet beside her. She’s startled at first, but quick to give Lena a wry smile, and she must be on hold because she tucks the phone into her shoulder and says, “I feel like you have too many privileges. Does anyone ever supervise you?”

On another day, this nonchalant, endearing way that Andrea addresses her would have Lena’s stomach fluttering and may even be enough to drag a smile from her. Even if it’s all superficial, even if none of it is real, Andrea is still the closest thing to a friend Lena has.

“I don’t know what to do,” Lena admits, back still pressed to the door.

“Okay. Do you want to sit down?”

“No.”

“What are you trying to do?”

 _Not contribute to the ruin that this horrendous fucking system’s caused any more than I already have_.

“I can’t talk about it,” Lena says.

If Andrea looks hurt, Lena’s certain she’s imagined it. “Is there something I can do?”

 _Tell me everything will be okay,_ Lena almost says. _Tell me I never had any other choice, tell me I’m not ruining anyone but myself, tell me that no matter the havoc I have wreaked on the people I care about — tell me I am nothing like them_.

Lena tells herself that she doesn’t say this because it’d be too embarrassing, and not because Lena already knows Andrea isn’t who she wants to say those words to at all.

“No.” Lena digs her blunt nails into her palms. “Can I stay here for a little bit? I’m supposed to be cleaning the kitchens right now, but I just—” 

Cleaning the kitchens means picking up a round of chewing tobacco, and even if that’s among the more harmless of her inventories, she’s in no mood for it now.

“Of course.” Andrea thumbs at the dialpad, ending her current call like it’s nothing. “I’ll take care of it.”

She then makes a quick call to who Lena can only assume is Edge, and even though Lena knows she’ll be berated for skipping on this later, for now she can’t be bothered to care. Give her a week on vacation, take away her visiting and phone privileges, stick her on bathroom duty for the rest of the year, it doesn’t matter. 

After Andrea hangs up the phone again, Lena can feel the weight of her concern, heavy like a water-laden sack on her shoulders. Just when she expects Andrea to say something, the psychologist instead makes her way slowly around her desk. 

It’s surreal, seeing Andrea standing on this side of her office. She’s taller than Lena even without heels, and although Lena knew this subconsciously, it’s still strange to see the ever so slightly lowered slant of Andrea’s gaze as she looks across the short space at her. 

Lena still has her back against the door, and her heart is skidding like tires on ice for an entirely different reason now.

Just as Lena is about to ask what she’s doing, Andrea reaches out for the dusty metal chair in the corner, one that has never left said corner in the six years that Lena’s known this office. Andrea’s mouth widens into something almost like a smile, but more tender than amicable, and when she pulls over the chair, Lena hardly hears the scrape of its legs across the linoleum floor.

“Do you mind?” Andrea asks, and Lena’s never heard her voice so quiet before, so low and velvet. “I don’t know about you, but I hate being on my feet all day.”

Andrea sits on a chair that is most definitely going to leave hideous stains of dust and lint along her trousers, but she moves with all the nonchalance of a friend pulling up a seat to dinner. It comes right beside the cheap cushioned one Lena usually sits in, and it hardly takes a genius in a meltdown to understand what she’s trying to do.

Andrea’s subtle prompting should make Lena press even harder into the steel behind her, but — terribly — her feet take her away from the door, and she sits in the chair beside Andrea as if summoned, and slowly shakes her head.

Andrea bites her lip, contemplative, and Lena watches as her amber lipstick smudges on her front teeth. Lena isn’t sure if she’s more fascinated by her imperfect mouth or the novelty of this entire arrangement.

It must be obvious, Lena’s lingering gaze. Andrea doesn’t mention it. Instead, her gaze drops even lower than Lena’s, and it’s only now that Lena realizes how her hands are shaking in her lap, twitching with all the anxiety she can’t contain.

Andrea takes her hands. 

It should be more complicated. Andrea shouldn’t be touching her at all, or maybe Lena shouldn’t want her to. But it’s simple in execution, at least. Andrea is slow and delicate as she winds her fingers around Lena’s trembling knuckles, and for a moment Lena thinks there must be something that she’s forgotten to do in a situation like this, but as Andrea’s hands close firmly around Lena’s, Lena finds her shoulders sagging and her stiff arms loosening, and that’s that.

She won’t cry. She doesn’t think she even has it in her to do so, and it’d be pathetic if she did. 

Funny, really. Lena’s pictured doing plenty of things with Andrea, in and out of this office, but she never imagined what the splay of Andrea’s fingers around the back of her hands would feel like, or how soft the gesture could ever be. And with Andrea bent so close, Lena realizes that what always smelled like roses from afar isn’t that at all, but instead a sweeter, more herbal fragrance that she can’t quite name.

“Is this better?” Andrea asks, and Lena imagines she can feel the reverberation of her voice. 

“No,” Lena admits, but she doesn’t pull away. “But you do smell nice.”

Andrea’s throaty laugh does resonate like an echo down to her fingertips. “Thank you. I would say you do too, but I don’t think I’m supposed to acknowledge the contraband.”

Lena stills. “The what?”

As intimate as it feels when Andrea tilts her head, leaning impossibly closer, Lena knows it’s all clinical. 

“Your shampoo,” Andrea says. “Or conditioner. Either way, I’m certain there’s nothing in the commissary that smells this good.”

The warm murmur of her voice in the space between them, the fact that Andrea still holds her at all, makes Lena even more obscenely aware of how flush their skin is, balanced together both as loose and snug as fabric. 

“You’re okay,” Andrea says. The way her eyes don’t waver as they hold Lena’s feels impossibly more intimate than her touch, so much so that Lena has to look down and away. But this close, face-to-face, Lena could taste her perfume if she tried.

Lena returns to this age-old question, wondering how much Andrea really knows. Even in the palm of her hand, the steady pulse under Andrea’s wrist bringing Lena closer than she’s ever been to that clandestine heart, Lena’s uncertainty reaches new heights. Her world hangs in a more uncertain balance than ever, more than even the fateful night that put her here.

 _Does it matter?_ she wonders. Whatever Andrea knows, however she fits into this colossal nightmare, Lena’s hands will still come away bloodier. However it is that Andrea is or isn’t involved, the Luthor name is and always has been the worst thing to ever happen to this place.

—

“I don’t want to do this right now.”

“Yeah, too fucking bad.”

The white popcorn ceiling above her is a sea of distorted texture. Kara knows it’s the drugs, but the longer she stares, the heavier the pit in her stomach becomes. She thought that with an impacted fracture in her arm and a displaced break in her collarbone, they would let her sleep more after the surgery. Instead, it’s been only half an hour since they finished the procedure of setting her bones and ten minutes since Alex came in.

Alex paces the room, flipping back and forth through Kara’s short medical chart, reviewing whatever little information there is over and over again like any of it might change.

It does feel real. Of course it does. Everything. Too real, too close to her skin, too bright and too loud. She wants to purge this slick, oily reality like a bad meal.

“Was it him?”

“Was what him?”

“Was he the one you’ve been seeing?” Alex scoffs. “No wonder you kept it a secret. I would too if I was sleeping with my professor.”

Kara shuts her eyes. “He wasn’t my professor. He was—”

_Was._

His unmoving body, his limp, dangling extremities when the emergency personnel finally came. She doesn’t remember if this is anything she actually saw, or if his wide unseeing eyes are only a sculpted echo of a nightmare conjured by her own mind.

Never mind. Maybe none of this is real after all.

Kara digs her nails into her palm to pull away from the swell of heat behind her eyes, and even such a small motion still pulls on the tendons and muscles weaving up her arm, but the throb of pain in her shoulder is dulled by all the medication.

“He was an adjunct,” she forces. “He was my TA first term last year. We didn’t start anything until after.”

“How responsible of you.”

“Can you please just—” Kara splinters off, and she thuds her head back into the pillows with unshed tears like chips of glass in her eyes.

She knows what Alex is doing. She knows Alex is horrified right now, knows that she must have felt like she was about to vomit her heart out when she got the call about Kara. She knows that Alex must feel only hot, liquid terror clotting in her veins because she knows Alex internalizes her panic and never really learned how to manage it outside of bottling it up like a rich secret. 

She knows Alex is just afraid. Even through this sludge-like high and the bleary cloak of her injuries, even through whatever shock her body is still struggling to deal with right now, Kara can understand how Alex feels. 

What she doesn’t understand is why Alex has never known how to stop and offer Kara the same courtesy.

“I really don’t think I can do this right now,” Kara says again.

Alex takes this only as a change of topic instead of dropping it altogether. ‘They’re still trying to determine his BAC. It’s harder postmortem, but it can still be done.”

“He wasn’t drunk.”

“You said he’d been—”

“He had a few drinks over a couple hours. He wasn’t drunk, okay? Something—” The burn of tears wells up again, and Kara can’t tell if it’s getting worse or not. “Something was wrong with his car.”

“Like it broke down?”

“His brakes. His brakes stopped working.”

Alex is quiet for a second, for too long. “You hit your head pretty bad. With a grade-three concussion and the whiplash, amnesia is common. The police ruled it an accident.”

“I know what happened.” 

“Which is what?”

“I told you, his brakes—”

“Stopped working, right, yeah. So what are you saying with that? The car manufacturer is at fault? The mechanic who passed his inspection?”

Kara grits her teeth, the sound hollow in her skull. “We made plans for last night in advance. Plenty of people knew we’d be there, and enough knew he’d be using their car.”

“Whose car?”

“His parents’.”

“Okay, and…?”

Kara’s own lips taste like ash, like clotted static. “I don’t… I wouldn’t even know where to start, how many people knew where he’d be last night and which car was his. I don’t—” 

“I’m sorry,” Alex cuts her off. “You think someone killed your boyfriend? Jesus Kara, do you hear yourself right now?”

She knows Alex is just afraid. Kara repeats that in her head, runs it over again and again like the reassurances her sister should be giving her instead, because there’s little else to cling to and Kara can feel herself slipping.

“He knew,” she whispers. The realization descends upon her like the shredded shrapnel of the car crumpling in all around her.

“Knew what?”

“He was the only other person who knew about the brief.”

Finally the concern knitting Alex’s face into a frown is starting to look empathetic. She crosses her arms and leans into the foot of Kara’s bed. “The what?”

“My theory, the— the paper I wrote about Lena’s case.”

“The one for your class?”

Kara looks up, and meeting Alex’s gaze feels like an apology all on its own. “No.”

“Then what—?” 

When it sinks in, understanding passes reluctantly over Alex’s face like she’d rather come to any other conclusion. Kara isn’t even sure if the one Alex draws is the right one, but the only punchline her sister cares about is that Kara took it too far.

She doesn’t know if she could cry even if she wanted to. Everything in her body feels far too broken for that. But saying these words out loud so frankly, she can’t help but feel like she’s just put a target on her sister’s back, and the tears feel inevitable. 

“Okay,” Alex sighs. “I’m calling your PA back in here.”

“You don’t believe me?”

Halfway to the call button, Alex looks back at her helplessly. “Believe what? You’re delirious right now, and you haven’t told me a thing.”

“How long has it been?”

“What?”

“How long has it been since the accident?” Kara glances to the clock. “Three hours? And it sounds fine to you that the police have already ruled it an accident without having spoken to me yet?”

Alex’s coddling frustration replaces whatever concern. “You’re confused, and you don’t know what you’re saying. I know you’re in pain, you’ve just been through—”

“How would you know anything about what I’m feeling?” Kara snaps, the words acrid and hot like a reflex. 

They’re not getting anywhere. When Alex seems to realize this, that talking to Kara in this state is probably a mistake, it hurts that it’s more out of disbelief for Kara’s credibility than actual empathy.

Alex gestures to the door. “I’m gonna have your PA give you another hit of morphine. Just… get some rest, Kara.”

Someone calls Mike’s parents. Kara can’t remember what she said in the ambulance, if she’d been awake at all, or if they’d just found his ID on him. 

Largand, Mike’s father, doesn’t come. Not to Kara’s room anyway. Rhea does.

Kara must have still been in surgery when they arrived. Or maybe they were told over the phone. Was he dead when they found him? The realization that if his mother is here at the hospital, then there must have been some hope he’d make it, because otherwise police would have simply been sent to their house to break the news. Kara chokes on this thought as it dawns, mourns for a hope she was never allowed to have.

Rhea trails in slowly. The anaesthesia is wearing off, and Kara is about to be discharged, the extent of her injuries not deeper than the few broken bones already set in surgery. She wonders if Mike’s mother waited until Alex left the room, because she’s come conveniently at the one moment her sister’s gone for the first time in an hour.

“How are you feeling?” she asks Kara.

Like the world has forgotten to end, like Kara needs to remind it. “I’ve been better.”

“Mm.” Rhea clasps her hands together in front of her, curious as she strolls along the room. 

They hadn’t exactly connected at that dinner all those months ago when they first met, but Kara still cares. “How’re you doing?”

Rhea just laughs. It sounds like charcoal — as cold and dead as it is volatile. 

Mike’s mom says nothing else, simply pats Kara on the knee like consoling a child who’s scraped their elbow. She eventually leans in for a hug, but the gesture seems more figurative than anything else, something she thinks she’s supposed to do. She’s careful not to touch Kara’s broken frame, doesn’t so much as jostle Kara’s hair, only presses close to her.

But what she whispers in her ear rattles Kara down to the marrow of her bones.

“ _They’re watching you, darling._ ”

Kara starts as Rhea pulls away, fixes her with incredulous horror. Is that a threat? A warning? Her mouth opens to ask, but the minute shake of Rhea’s head is so soft and so resolute that she can’t get the words out.

Rhea doesn’t ask what happened, doesn’t ask what her son’s last words were. She doesn’t ask for clarity in such a tragedy, and she doesn’t look back at Kara like a mother who has lost her world. Kara wonders if the gravity just hasn’t sunken in yet, or if Mike will truly be missed more by a girl who never loved him than his own mother.

Rhea leaves, and that’s it.

Of course Kara finally cries. Of course she does.

They don't keep her long. Kara expected that she’d be kept under round-the-clock care for the rest of the day at least, given that Alex was a respected physician at this hospital and maybe she’d insist. But no. Around four in the morning, once the grogginess of the surgery has worn off, they send her home with nothing but a navy sling and a prescription for a high dosage of ibuprofen.

Even when the drugs are long gone, even when the adrenaline has passed, even when Kara settles into the spare-bedroom mattress at Alex’s apartment, that slinking paranoia still sets in, as if it’s the only friend Kara can still look in the eye.

 _They’re watching you, darling_.

Normally, she would think that maybe she shouldn’t be so quick to such conclusions. Maybe Alex is right, that she doesn’t remember what’s happened. But with the haunting echo of his mother’s words, the conviction that she and Mike were both targeted is so absolute that she doesn’t know how to think about anything else, and it sits on her chest like a world Kara’s never known, pinning her immobile to the mattress.

Mike gave the brief to his father, but Kara never factored Largand into any of this. He worked in contract law and had no history of involvement with the state department of corrections, Lena’s father _or_ Mercy Graves.

Did his parents know? When their son stepped up to their door with his boyish smile to pick up the car keys, did they know what they were handing him instead? Did they load the gun, or just zip the black bag shut after the fact? Did they kill him, or just watch him die?

And, finally: did Rhea tell Kara so as to prompt her to give up, or to tread forward carefully? Did Rhea know the truth about Kara being the actual source of that brief? 

The only consolation is that she’s made it this far without any other attempt on her life, but that doesn’t mean much. Monsters always wait until it’s dark. No one cleans up a mess when there’s still daylight. No, the privacy of nightfall is always so much more appealing.

No one comes.

After sleeping the rest of the day away, Kara goes home early that same evening, not even twenty-four hours after the accident. She would’ve stayed longer if every wince and muffled groan didn’t spark an argument with Alex, who apparently took as much issue with Kara trying to hide her pain as she was with the fact Kara was suffering at all.

The phone is already ringing when she does, struggling to open the door with only one hand, and she’d be tempted to ignore it if she didn’t know who it is.

She answers. _“This call will be monitored and recorded. You have a collect call from… Lena Luthor… an inmate at a National City Correctional Facility. To accept charges, press 1.”_

Kara presses, and Lena’s voice comes through like reality cutting the tapestry of a bad dream. “ _There you are._ ”

“Hi.”

“ _I called you yesterday, and when you didn’t answer I started to wonder about that phone bill of yours.”_

What is she supposed to say? What are the chances that she already knows? What would she do if— 

“Worried about me, were you?” Kara forces out. She’s more startled than impressed with how cool her words sound. She sets herself gingerly on a chair in the narrow living room, wincing despite her care. 

“ _A little bit, unfortunately. I thought about everything you said the other day._ ” Lena pauses, and Kara could just sob at the irony.

“And?”

“ _Why are you doing this?”_

That alone is enough to raise alarms, and with nausea hot in her throat, Kara doesn’t know how she keeps her words steady. “Talking to you still? I like the sound of your voice, I guess.”

Lena must understand Kara’s need to divert, that her question wasn’t subtle enough over a monitored line. She understands the half-hearted, flirtatious remark is a manipulative deflection, and the silence that follows just leaves a slimy bulge in Kara’s throat.

Kara struggles to wipe her damp eyes with the same hand that holds the phone, and she must make some sound of discomfort, because Lena asks, “ _Are you okay?_ ”

She’s asked Kara that so many times. Why is it that, every time, Kara just feels that much closer to collapsing? She can’t tell her, not like this. The audio prompt itself tells her that this call is being recorded, and Rhea’s words still hang ominously around her. But if someone _is_ listening, would it look worse if Kara doesn’t mention it? 

Because it all comes down to what’s more important: hiding, or seeming as if she has nothing to hide?

Kara sinks back into the seat tiredly. What she wouldn’t give to be able to speak freely with Lena like she had in their letters. All of that glittering thrill has worn off, Kara hardly remembers what that feels like anymore, but there’s still something that stirs like excitement at hearing Lena’s voice even if she can’t say anything she wants to. Maybe it’s not happiness, but she feels less alone with Lena in her ear.

“Do you think we would have been friends?” Kara asks eventually, staring blankly across the room. 

_“If we met inside a prison rather than out of it? Unlikely. I’m not the most social in here_.”

That makes Kara laugh, however feeble. “Yeah, I’ve noticed. You’re two seconds from having me banned from the grounds every time I see you. You’re nicer on the phone.”

Maybe that’s just because they can’t talk about anything else here. 

“ _Ah, so if we met out there, you mean?_ ” Lena speaks with that same lightheartedness that Kara so impossibly craves. _“I don’t know if we would have met at all, to be honest. What do you do in your spare time when you’re not interrogating me?_ ”

Rush through her studies so she can favor time spent on Lena’s case. Avoid social obligations so she could have Mike’s input on her theories. Disrupt family holidays and drive a wedge between her sister’s relationships, alienate herself, get herself almost killed in trying to save someone that everyone else considers to already be dead.

“Normal stuff, I guess,” Kara mutters. “What did you used to do?”

 _“Mm. Doesn’t matter._ ”

It’s not that Kara is looking for something specific, but that’s still not what she wants to hear. “Why not?”

_“I probably wouldn’t still be there when you came anyway.”_

Oh. “You know I’m older than you, right?”

“ _Are you?”_ Lena sounds amused.

“You’re twenty-four. I’m a year older than you.”

“ _Interesting. How serendipitous.”_

“Just humor me, okay?”

Lena sighs, almost a hum, and Kara pictures her tapping her foot, glancing around her, itching to end the call, already regretting picking up the phone in the first place. Just as a fresh wave of tears starts to build behind her eyes again, Lena answers.

“ _I didn’t spend much time on campus, or in the library or anything if that’s what you’re wondering. I… studied with friends, mostly. Well,_ a _friend._ ”

Samantha Arias, Kara assumes. She sits up, as best she can. “A friend from your classes?”

“ _She went to NCU, yes._ ”

Kara notes the evasion, however slight. If she’s learned anything by now, it’s that every word has a string holding it up where Lena’s concerned.

For just the briefest moment, Kara almost lets herself wonder. Wonder, just for a second, what it would be like if Lena has known the truth of her family’s murder all along, if she already knows that Mike is gone.

She immediately slams the thought out, the force of her avoidance enough to leave her rattled even after she swallows a deep breath.

“Were you two close?” 

“ _I think I’ve told you about her before_.”

She hasn’t, Kara’s sure of it even as she mentally recalls every correspondence they’ve ever had. The only times Kara has heard anything about Lena Luthor’s former best friend, it had been in court papers or news clippings. 

Kara hears the unspoken sentiment: _You know who I’m talking about_. Lena would know by now that Kara already knows who Samantha is, and that this would be enough to hint at her without naming her outright. Or was she simply trying to drop the conversation altogether? Both?

Is this a hint?

What Kara wouldn’t give to be able to talk like they used to, to tell her everything, to have someone else to lighten this stabbing load.

She is so tired.

“Why do you talk to me differently like this?”

“ _Sorry?”_

“You act like you’re counting the seconds until I leave when I visit you, and then you call like you’re waiting for me to say something.”

Lena says nothing, and then she laughs. “ _I… I told you I’m not used to this.”_

“I’m not either.”

“ _Which part?_ ”

Kara barely breathes. “Do you trust me?”

Lena hesitates, she always hesitates, and: “ _I think you’re someone worth trusting._ ”

Before, Kara might’ve let her get away with that. “What does that mean?”

“ _It means I want to trust you.”_

Is that enough? Would it even be possible to ask for more?

“ _When do you think you’ll be able to—”_

“I’m sorry,” Kara interrupts, mostly because the choke of tears isn’t subsiding and she can’t keep doing this. “I have to go.”

It’s late when her door buzzes. Kara doesn’t move from the bed and continues to stare up at the ceiling like she has been for the last three hours.

The only reason she does get up is Siobhan’s shout across the apartment. She doesn’t make out the exact words, too muffled through the walls, or maybe Kara just cares too little. Either way, Siobhan only shouts across the apartment to tell her to be quieter or to get the door, and the only way Kara could manage to be any quieter than she is now would be to stop existing altogether.

Not the worst idea. 

Kara drags herself from bed with a sour grimace, an unfathomably deep ache spidering through her shoulder, and she refrains from slouching as she shuffles to the front door. She expects it to be Alex just as much as she hopes it isn’t, so when Kelly’s voice comes clear and sweet through the intercom, the relief is palpable.

At the same time, Kara wonders why she’d been wishing to find herself disappointed.

By the time Kelly makes it up to her floor, Kara’s left the door open, and she sits stiffly on the narrow living room couch.

Kelly shuts the door behind her, an easy smile on her face. “Hey, you. How’re you feeling?”

“Did Alex send you?”

“No, actually.” Kelly zips herself out of her boots before crossing into the living room, and she tucks into the couch beside Kara like this is any other game night. “She tried to talk me out of coming.”

That alone hurts more than any of the callous things Alex has said to her in the last few days, but Kara lets Kelly’s words bounce off her like everything else.

“I’m sorry,” Kara says eventually.

“For what?”

“I shouldn’t have asked you to steal those reports. I never apologized for that.”

Kelly’s confusion gives way to a soft smile, and she tilts her head. “I thought we agreed I _borrowed_ them.”

She would laugh, but laughing spears daggers through her chest like a punishment, and maybe there’s some kind of irony in that. 

“No, really,” Kara says, trying not to picture the perverse angle of Mike’s body, to not hear the cold breath of his mother’s warning. “It wasn’t fair to involve you. I jeopardized your job and put you in a bad place with Alex, and I didn’t even hold up my end of the deal, and—”

“Hey,” Kelly interrupts, dropping a hand to Kara’s knee. “It’s okay. Thank you, but it’s okay. That actually brings me to the reason that I’m here.”

“This isn’t a welfare check?”

“Alex told me what you said.” 

The plunge of cold panic at those words should mask out everything else, but a fine stream of interest breaks through with a sharp point, and for just a moment, the aching melancholy parts to the side, and Kelly comes clearer into focus.

“Told you what… exactly?”

“You wrote a brief.”

The panic fogs over again. 

At Kara’s silence, Kelly prods. “You think it’s connected, don’t you? To what happened?”

“What did she tell you?”

Kelly sighs and pulls her hand back into her lap, taking the warmth with her. “She thinks you’re becoming obsessed with a fantasy, and that if she lets you keep going like this without consequence then you’re stubborn enough to drive yourself off the rails and throw your life away.”

“You could’ve sugarcoated that.”

“Okay, she’s concerned about your priorities. Is that better?”

“Do you think she’s right?”

Unexpectedly, Kelly laughs, but it’s almost as sad as it is endeared. “If I thought she was right, I wouldn’t be telling you this. Well, not like this, anyway. You’re lucky I talked her out of an intervention.”

If an intervention would stop anyone else from getting hurt, maybe it’d be for the best.

She doesn’t know what to make of Kelly’s words, of the perceptive way she dances along the line of truth without calling it for what it is. After sitting on what happened for the better part of the last two days, Kara is torn between chasing Kelly off in any direction away from the truth and out of harm’s way, and the boneless relief of having someone she could confide in, someone who might _believe_ her, more than just for the chance to exploit a secret.

But Kelly isn’t just a convenient confidante, and Kara never wanted to play god.

Paranoia has a habit of creeping in like it belongs. It shrouds around her shoulders like it’s a friend of hers, like someone who has her best interests in mind when it poisons her ear.

Looking at Kelly, Kara wonders if someone is listening in on their conversation. She wonders if, should that car accident have been meant to kill, there’s someone out there who had been expecting two obituaries this morning.

Kelly must take Kara’s silence for something else, because she says, “Alex is just scared. You know that.”

 _Of course I do_ , Kara thinks, her fingers curling into fists, the pull of tendons up her arm straining at the rubbery pain. She’s been reminding herself of how Alex must feel for so long now that she can’t remember a time she ever considered anything else first.

Instead of dwelling on that, Kara hangs her head. “I’m sorry you’re in the middle of all this.”

“Sweetie, I love you and your big, bleeding heart, but can you do me a favor?”

“What?”

“You’ve been through a lot, and you’re trying to take on a lot. Let yourself be selfish for more than a few hours, okay?”

Kara nods, even if she has no idea what she’s agreeing to, because all the contradictory desires pulling her every which way make _selfish_ a moot point. It’s selfish to involve anyone else when the risks are clear, and it’s selfish to do this alone when Kara would be up against an inevitable end if she does.

What’s the selfless act here? To spare anyone else the involvement, or to spare those who care about her the grief? Because giving up was never an option, no matter the terror that seizes her.

— 

“You always call people by their first names.”

Lena’s familiar with being afraid. Though it might be more that fear presents itself less like panic, and more as awe. Fascinated, stricken awe that things are not as they seem. 

Namely, Gayle.

“Okay?” Lena looks sidelong at the blonde, who is buffing the newly-waxed floor with a terry cloth, though she seems more intent on scraping all the wax off than actually setting it. “Okay, be _gentle_ with that.”

It’s lucky that suspicion and impatience are closely aligned behaviors, because so far, Lena has had to change very little about how she approaches Gayle without giving away her unease.

“I’ve just noticed, like, everyone else will address each other by last names, but you always use their first,” Gayle says. “I called Ardeen by her first name the other day and she almost broke my nose.”

Lena hides her smirk behind the curtain of her hair, also on her hands and knees. “Have you considered Imra just doesn’t like you?”

“Who wouldn’t like me? I’m a fucking delight.”

Gayle’s a thorn in Lena’s side that she thought had already healed over, only to find out too late that it’s infected. She lets her silence stand for itself.

“So, why do you?” Gayle prods.

Lena’s never given much thought to it, really. When she first came here, she refrained from calling anyone by anything. She was “lucky” enough that her father was a law enforcement official, and her prolific name now held the feat of killing him, so this left her relatively alone based solely on respect. She’s always learned more by watching, and by the end of her first year, from observation alone, she was halfway to the septic omniscience she has now. 

That was when she met Veronica.

Where Gayle latched onto Lena like a needy puppy, Veronica had trailed two steps behind Lena at every turn and chose her questions like trading currency. She was watching Lena before, during, and after Lena’s recruitment by the guards. For years, Lena used to wonder if Veronica had already been under their influence and was the one to scout Lena for the role. Lena learned by observing the crowds in silence, and Veronica learned by stalking the one who knew it all.

 _“You’re not in charge,_ ” Veronica said the first time she approached Lena. She looked like someone creeping across an icy lake, trailing a big catch beneath the surface. “ _But you haven’t even realized how lost they’d be without you.”_

Lena used to resent Veronica for all her assumptions, even berated her for it. Maybe discrediting her was easier than admitting those assumptions were always right. 

Almost always.

“I don’t know,” Lena answers honestly. “Old habit.”

“It’s like you’re trying to make some kind of point.”

“Such as?”

“I don’t know.” Gayle cocks Lena a sideways glance, as if observing an abstract art piece. “Have you figured me out, yet?”

Lena easily masks her alarm, but her chest still tightens. “You mean the fact you speak in riddles because you think it makes you seem clever, but you rarely have the answer to your own words, so you stall with circling sarcasm to buy yourself time to figure it out? Sure. How am I doing so far?”

Gayle laughs, slumped over the shiny floors, though it comes out more like a breathless giggle. “You hardly need my seal of approval. But sure, yeah. Although, maybe I’d know what I was talking about a little more if you actually _gave_ me any answers.”

Did Lena misstep somewhere? Maybe. But no matter the angle, Lena can’t come up with anything dangerous Gayle could know, nothing more than the other inmates do. Gayle still hasn’t fully grasped the logistics of the cards, and even if she did, every one of Lena’s customers already understands the system anyway. Gayle knows the guards are involved, but the notion that anyone in this facility might not know the prison staff is a crowd of corrupt pigs is _laughable_. Gayle has picked up quirks and tidbits from Lena over the last three months about where comfort can be found in the most uncomfortable of homes, but Lena’s shared nothing she wouldn’t divulge to anyone else if asked. Most others just have the common sense not to.

Gayle knows about Kara. What exactly she knows, Lena has no idea, but it can’t be anything along the lines of what Kara told Lena three days ago. And isn’t that exactly the crux of the problem? Because that’s the ultimate dilemma with Gayle.

If she tells _them_ , she risks Gayle ending up just like Veronica — sent off to competently waste her life on a baseless sentence slinging their schoolyard drugs and blood-slick candy with no hope for any release at all, much less an early one. And if she doesn’t, if there is something more sinister behind Gayle’s ridiculous smile so that they already know but are just waiting for Lena to prove herself, if this is just a test, then—

Then what? Gayle can’t know anything concrete about the law-student. Everyone who mattered knew about Kara the moment she walked into this prison; people that pose far greater a threat than Gayle ever could know _plenty_ more. And however abominably accurate Kara’s theory is, it’s not like she’s about to spill all the conspiratory details to Gayle over their lunch trays. 

There is one option. Maybe there’s others, maybe Lena could come up with something better if she thought harder. But looking up at the young blonde still scrubbing the floors too vigorously, Lena knows this is her best option, however cruel it is.

“Fine,” Lena says, taking the bait. “What do you want to know?

“Tell me about the cards.”

Lena glances briefly at the two guards stationed at the door, and keeps her tone low. “You’ve been picking up collections for over a month now. I thought you said you were smart.”

“I know you have some sort of contraband ring going, and the cards are some kind of ordering system, but c’mon, I want to know the specifics.”

“Why?”

“Call it curiosity.”

“Why, Gayle?”

There’s a hard cut to Gayle’s eyes at that, one that Lena doesn’t expect. “I learned a long time ago that… there’s a balance to knowing things. Once you know enough, you become too valuable to discard.”

“Then you understand what happens when you know too much.”

 _Then you understand that’s exactly what I’m setting you up for_.

“I do. But you know I’m nowhere close to enough.”

Lena almost smiles. She would, if not for what happened to Veronica. If Gayle is working with them, then she already knows what Lena’s about to tell her, and there’s an upper hand to be had in making them think that Lena trusts their mole. 

And if Gayle isn’t, if she’s her own person with only her own ambitions, then she has a right to make her own choices. Even if Lena is helping her sell her soul, well. She’s only giving her what she wants.

“Hearts are for desirables,” Lena says.

“Desirables?”

“Food, higher-end cosmetics, tobacco products, pirated DVDs, cassette tapes, et cetera. The things they want that a commissary doesn’t have.”

“And the diamonds are what, drugs?”

“They prefer substances.”

Gayle’s brow knits, like a young girl puzzling over her homework. “What do you do with the black cards? I always collect them back for you, but you never send me out with them.”

“Time and place.”

“For picking up the stuff?”

“No, for when to make their call. The suit tells you where, the number tells you when.”

“A call? Like on the phone?”

“I give them access to a cell phone, and they get a call telling them where to send a Western Union transfer. It’s an anonymous wire transfer.”

“Where are they sending the transfer from?”

Lena can’t help but check again that the guards aren’t listening to them, but it’s Queen and another newbie, and the former is too busy revelling in the latter’s fascination as the new kid asks him question after question. 

Lena continues: “Ace of hearts.”

“What’s that one?”

“For when they need a prepaid debit card to hook up with Western Union, and the funds get taken from their commissary account.”

“So what, you’re telling me everyone turns a blind eye to a bunch of comm accounts getting drained? Shouldn’t there be some kind of cover so they at least seem like they’re buying something?”

She almost wishes Gayle actually is double-crossing her, if only because Lena would hate to learn Gayle really is this naïve. “There is. Come on, Gayle. You worked these kinds of books for a living.”

After a moment, her eyes alight. “The stamps. I _knew_ that shit was expensive for no reason.”

Lena nods. “You buy mailing stamps, and you order an ace of hearts. They’re overpriced because the difference for how many you’re given gets put onto a prepaid card, which gets linked to your Western Union, and then the cellphone tells you how to send the transfer to us.”

“Us?”

Lena resists rolling her eyes. “Them. Higher ups.”

“But wait, what happens to the money once you buy the stamps? The commissary takes it, yeah, but then you have the same issue of revenue disappearing.”

Even if Lena trusted her, there’s only so many details Gayle needs to know, so for now she settles with: “There’s a long chain of money transfers that covers their tracks.”

Gayle shakes her head. “Sorry, but is this really supposed to make anything easier?”

“Makes it safer. The prison launders the extra income with the stamps, and no IRS rep has ever batted an eye at overpriced prison commissaries. And not everyone has someone on the outside to get them those prepaid cards, so we make the option available to them.”

“How accessible of you.”

Lena turns on her with a flare. “This setup is not my doing.”

“You run a tight ship, Luthor. Or someone just really damn trusts you.”

Whether Gayle is spying on her or not, Lena refuses to let her think like this. “This _ship_ is older than either of us. The only reason I have any semblance of authority is not because of trust, but because they know I have nowhere to take this secret but to my grave.”

For just a moment, Lena sees Kara’s fervent face, that steely glow at the end of a forked-off path Lena never thought existed. Maybe there is somewhere else.

“And me?” Gayle’s eyes are wide with wonder, and she looks so much like the guard, Lena’s almost overwhelmed with a sick shame.

_What am I doing? She’s just a kid._

But so was Veronica. So was Lena. 

_“You don’t like to ask for help, but I guess it’s your lucky day_ ,” Veronica whispered once as she sat beside Lena on the rec-room couch, too close, their thighs touching. She’d only been watching Lena for a few months by that point.

_“How so?”_

Veronica had a small smile that countered the sharp teeth of the snakes painted along her shoulders.

_“Because I’m not someone who waits around to be asked.”_

Lena was barely twenty at the time, could derive the equation for general relativity with nothing more than a stick of chalk and some concrete, and she already ran more product for the prison than most Metropolis dealers would ever see on any downtown corner. But she was still just a girl, more terrified of being noticed than she was lonely, however desperately she wanted Veronica to _see_ her. 

It was never about desire, not like that. It was always about the cold Lena couldn’t shake, and the flame Veronica couldn’t catch.

Of course it’s selfish, taking Gayle’s fascination like an ultimatum. There’s no way out of this that Gayle wins, and if what Kara said is true, then Lena already lost years ago.

“That’s up to you,” Lena tells Gayle, because the girl deserves to believe she has a choice, because Lena wishes someone had told her the same lie, because at least then she might’ve tried harder.

“Do you feel like you have people you can depend on?”

Andrea barely looks up as Lena enters. “I’m starting to think you have more security clearance than I do.”

Lena pauses in the entrance before rolling her eyes, and shuts the door. “Thank god you’re not my only source for comedy.”

“Why?”

“Because that joke wasn’t funny the first time you made it, either.”

“Hm.” Andrea leans back in her seat, but her mouth twitches as it threatens to break into what would undoubtedly be a cheeky smile. “What do you come to me for, then?”

“Apparently to have all my questions ignored. So, do you?”

“Do I what?”

“Do you have people you can trust?” she repeats, sitting across from Andrea. While she can’t ever let her guard down completely, it is still a reprieve to be here, away from watchful eyes. 

“Rely on, or trust?”

“So you were listening.”

“Is reliability the only condition for being trustworthy?”

“Come on,” Lena huffs, leaning her elbows onto Andrea’s desk tiredly. “Please leave the shrink cap out of this for five minutes at least.”

“It truly is a mystery why you come to see me.”

“Straight answers, for one thing.”

Andrea raises an eyebrow, and finally the first peak of a smile breaks. “And here I thought you wanted me to be anything but.”

“Really?” Lena scoffs, even if she feels a familiar heat at the tips of her ears. “Is this your retribution? Am I really this difficult to get an answer out of?”

“No, but I like that you think it is.” Like brushing the jokes aside, Andrea shuts the folders in front of her shut and clasps her hands together loosely. “Okay, am I to make the assumption that you’re asking me as a licensed professional, or an acquainted conversation partner?”

“I’m honestly just begging you to talk to me like a normal human being.”

“Friend it is. In that case, yes, I do. Why?”

“Like who?”

Andrea traces Lena’s face with her polished gaze, more serious now but still just as amused. It’d be easy to peg a look like that on a psychologist’s analytical fascination. But (setting Lena’s schoolgirl fantasies aside) something had changed between them since Lena was here three days ago. Lena wants to be wrong, if only because there’s more dignity in knowing it’s all in her head. But this? Wondering if something really _is_ different now because of a few weighted looks and the lingering brush of a hand? 

Lena prefers to waste her energy elsewhere, such as on speculating Gayle’s intentions. 

“My father, my friends,” Andrea answers. A twinkle in her eye, she adds: “You.”

Something very much has changed.

“And here I thought I was included in the friend category,” Lena deflects.

“And I thought you wanted to be special.”

Lena doesn’t want to play this game. Not now, at least. “How do you know if you can trust someone?”

“So you did come to me for advice. Do you want my professional answer?”

“No. I never want that.”

“Okay, girl-to-girl.” Andrea purses her lips, considering. “Gut instinct, personally. Because it doesn’t matter when someone has good intentions, not if I have any unaddressed doubts about them. I can’t help it. I’m an all-or-nothing type.”

Lena notices she skipped the lipstick today. Her mouth is still a hypnotic, coral pink, but Lena misses the way it soaked her mouth.

“What if you doubt everyone?”

At Andrea’s grin, Lena expects her to ask, _do you doubt me?_ , but gratefully, she only says, “Are you sure you don’t want my professional advice?”

“If you’re going to try to dissect the source of my trust issues, then yes, I’m sure.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Look, I just want _you_.”

Lena means to argue she doesn’t mean it how it sounds, because she honestly doesn’t, but a glimpse of delight flares in Andrea’s eyes. Lena recognizes it well enough, because she sees it any time she passes out a card from her deck. It’s the insatiably gluttonous, carnal look of someone getting what they want.

Of course Lena wants her, of course she has for years, and of course it’s not like how she once wanted Veronica, but it’s still nothing like how she wants—

Steel eyes, a voice rich and soft like pastel, such devastating words. 

Lena finds, rather anticlimactically, that she is not asking about Gayle at all.

“If you doubt everyone,” Andrea starts, “then now and again, you should ask yourself if what you’re trying to give away is something that no one else deserves. Other times, trust and doubt are beside the point, and you can get lost looking for them. And, sometimes, you simply want something enough that you can wait to get it, and you find trust the same way you forgive an action after it’s already done.”

Any other day in Andrea’s office, Lena would take this advice at face value like everything else she says. Still it feels wrong, somehow, to hold Andrea’s steady gaze so willingly, as if her guidance comes from a deeper crevice in Andrea’s vault than just a simple psychologist’s consultation, like Andrea is sharing something of herself and not just a line from a book. 

It’s intimate, Lena realizes. She thought it was all in her head — and for years, it likely was — but her deliberate emphasis on _wanting_ and that potent stare both now point otherwise.

Of course Lena wants her. But she also understands that want doesn’t get anyone what they need, it just draws attention to it, like bloodstained fabric still wet around an open wound.

—

Kara’s not sure if she ends up at the library because research is what she’s good at, or if it’s just because she has nowhere else to go. 

If giving up isn’t an option, and neither is involving anymore of her friends, then Kara is left with two choices. At first, the decision seems easy. 

Kara stops short as she passes a table in the library, and her breath catches as if siphoned by a cold vacuum. That late night here feels like so long ago, but the memory of Mike’s hand brushing the back of her neck just before she shrugged him off comes with as much piercing clarity as if she were watching it unfold before her now.

Why did she have to make it so hard for him? All Kara ever did was take from him — his time, his unrequited love, his last breath — and she couldn’t even so much as hold his hand in the courtyard. 

Averting her gaze, Kara walks past the tables.

She needs someone who will want to help because they’re invested in Lena’s wellbeing, not because their loyalties are with Kara, and there’s only one person in this city who might care about Lena as much as Kara does, if not more. Lena all but prompted Kara to seek her out herself.

Whether it was Lena’s intention or not, Kara doesn’t have time to dwell on it.

If Samantha Arias was a student here at the same time as Lena, then that means she hopefully would have graduated anywhere between 2002 and 2006, and National City University has four graduate schools: medical, law, engineering, and business. Her first bet would be checking within the same year of admissions that Lena was in for the medical school.

But the student records aren’t held publicly in the library, and so after wasting her time there, Kara walks stiffly up to the bursar’s reception desk, swallowing down her grimace of discomfort. She hasn’t taken any painkillers since this morning, and those wore off hours ago, but the iron-grip pain makes her feel less like a stranger in her skin.

“Hi,” Kara starts with a friendly smile, trying to channel someone she remembers being. “I tried logging onto one of the university terminals in the library and for some reason my user ID doesn’t seem to be working.”

It’s an undergrad student behind the desk, Kara thinks. When the girl first looks up, she fails to hide her horror, but Kara’s already used to the aghast expressions over her battered appearance. Color touches the receptionist’s cheeks when she catches herself staring, and she clears her throat. 

“Did you try resetting your password?”

“Yeah, but I forgot the answer to my security question.” Kara forces a laugh. “I mean, who remembers the make and model of their second cousin’s first car anyway?”

After taking Kara’s student information and some keyboard clicks, the girl purses her lips. “It looks like… you do realize you deleted your account, right?”

Of course she does. “No, that can’t be right.”

“Yeah, it— Jeez, okay. I don’t know how you even did that.” The girl clicks a few more times, frowning at her screen. “What was your recovery email?”

“My what?”

Kara does feel a little bad wasting this poor girl’s time with recovering everything Kara herself deleted an hour ago, but the guilt over an undergrad office aid’s confusion isn’t high on Kara’s list of priorities. It isn’t long before the girl is rubbing her temple, muttering under her breath through various screens, that she finally sighs. 

“Okay, give me a minute. I’m gonna go find my supervisor, I don’t really know how to do this.”

She leaves her desk, and once she’s out of the room, Kara is quick around the desk and into the still-warm chair.

“Okay Samantha, where are you at these days?” she murmurs, minimizing out of the account help screen and making a quick search for old records.

Though it doesn’t take long to find what she’s looking for, Kara is still restless for each second she sits there, typing with her one hand, non-dominant at that. She easily could have asked for the information she needed, but she knew if she was rejected then it would only be harder to move on from there.

She wonders when distrust became the instinct. She wonders if refusing to dwell on that is as significant as it seems.

 _There_. Samantha “Sam” Arias, class of ‘07 from NCU Law. 

Kara wasn’t expecting that last bit.

There’s more information under her file, like the fellowships and internships she was involved in as a student, extracurriculars, other university involvements, and — most importantly — employer info for the firm she was hired into after graduating. It’s too much information for Kara to memorize or try and write down with her left hand, so she quickly sends it to the printer.

By the time the girl comes back with a stout, bald man, Kara is mid-rushing back from the printer adjacent to the desk, and she stuffs it down the back of her pants before they can notice.

They certainly give her a strange side-eye, but if they’re suspicious of her, they don’t say it. They probably already think she’s off the fritz anyway.

She doesn’t leave immediately, because— well. She _did_ delete her entire student account for this, and she does indeed have no idea how to get that back.

“Hi, my name is Kiera Wently from White and Blazevich, and I’m trying to update our computer records for some payroll information.” Kara presses the phone to her ear with her good hand, peering over her notes. “I wanted to double-check the billed hours with one of your associates, Samantha Arias, for some work she did for my department. Could you please put me through to her?”

“ _Ah, she’s on her lunch break right now. I can take a message though, is this a good number to reach you at?”_

“No, that’s alright, I just had a few quick questions.” Kara glances at the MapQuest page she already has pulled up for the firm, and she squints at the surrounding neighborhood on the screen. “Oh, she’s not at the Harold Plaza, is she? I met with her there when we went over the contracts. I’m around the corner from there now.”

“ _No, I don’t think so. I think she usually likes that Mediterranean salad place on Willington, sorry.”_

Kara is already hurrying out the library doors for the main road to call a cab. “No worries, I’ll try and call back later. Thanks so much.”

_“Sure thing, have a good afternoon.”_

She finds her coming out of the storefront with a paper bag in hand, but she’s not alone. A young girl is close to her side, chatting animatedly to Sam, and Kara’s stomach sinks. It was a thirty-dollar ride with tip to get here quick enough from campus, and Kara knows she can’t waste this opportunity, but the sour taste of ambushing someone like this is bad enough without bringing in— whoever that is. A daughter, younger sister, whatever child untainted by the ugly darkness that writhes under Kara’s skin now.

She wonders how far Mike would take this. If he were still by her side throughout her research, still a smiling soundboard for all her speculations and theories, still steadfast in all his encouragements, at what point would he tell her to turn back? Would she even recognize it when it comes, or has that point already passed?

Kara pushes herself off from the lamppost, wincing at how it strains her torso, and shuffles after them.

“Excuse me!” she calls from a safe distance, and the girl turns first. Kara forces herself not to look at her. “Excuse me, I’m sorry, but are you Samantha Arias?”

As far as being approached by a stranger goes, Sam takes it in stride. The girl gives Kara an uneasy look that Kara knows she more than deserves.

“Yeah, but Sam’s fine. Can I help you?”

“Um.” Kara put so much effort into finding her that she hadn’t given much thought for this moment. She knows what to say after, what point she wants to make, but— 

The young girl is staring at her, eyebrows furrowed with skepticism, and the roundness of her frown looks like the hurt in Mike’s eyes every time she pushed him away.

Kara blinks, and the girl is just a girl, no reflection of the ghosts that haunt.

When she struggles with how the words choke up in her mouth, and a sudden urge to cry rushes over her, Kara tells herself it’s only because of her frustration over her skewed, oscillating emotions. She pushes past it, standing taller than she feels, even if at the expense of her stiff, broken bones. 

“My name’s Kara Danvers, and I was wondering if you had a second to talk.”

Sam’s expression begins to mirror her daughter’s. “Are you from Mesa Verde? Because you can call the office, we have paralegals on a 24-hour line for you guys.”

“No, it’s not about that. You see, um… it’s about Lena.”

At the mere mention of her name, Sam’s face darkens and she looks away, turning back and decisively shifting the paper bag in her arms just as they approach an SUV on the curb. “Yeah, I don’t talk to reporters.”

“I’m not—”

“Or internet groupies, or blogpost nerds living in basements, or bored sadists with nothing better to do. I mean, seriously? Do you know how long it’s been? To still keep coming to me after all this time, when I’m trying to have lunch with my daughter, what kind of _nerve_ —”

“I’m a friend,” Kara interrupts hastily. “Of Lena’s. I— I know her.”

“Sure you do. Take one more step and you’ll be a damn good friend of my pepper spray. Ruby, get in the car.”

Her daughter obliges immediately as Kara takes an instinctive step back, if only because her eyes just stopped burning from bright lights the day before and she’s not interested in getting kicked down anymore. 

“I’m a student at NCU,” she rambles. “I’ve been interviewing her for a paper. Or I mean, talking. I never formally— and that whole thing’s over anyway, but— look, if you could give me—”

Sam stuffs a hand into her purse, and Kara doesn’t know what else to do.

“I need your help!” she blurts just as Samantha whips out a short, narrow tube, but her finger doesn’t press down. Her arm holds strong outstretched, but her eyes narrow ever so slightly as she tilts her head.

Kara clears her throat. “I think she's in danger.”

After a long silence, Sam says: “Lena didn’t have friends.”

“She had you.”

Her frown only deepens, but her arm finally lowers. “Who did you say you were?”

“I’m just a student, but I— I _really_ need to talk to you. In private, if you wouldn’t mind.”

“We’re talking just fine now.”

Kara swallows. The urge to cry surfaces all over again, and Kara is so desperate for someone she can rely on, but the notion of trust feels like such a far away luxury. “I don’t know who’s watching.”

Concern washes over the animosity. Clearly not for Kara, but it’s an intimate, resolute thing on Sam’s face. Maybe this should indicate that Kara made the right choice by coming to her, but it just makes her feel more intrusive than ever.

Sam flips the safety back on the pepper spray, but still she asks, “You know that I don’t have any reason to believe you, right?”

“I know, but I don’t know who I can trust anymore, and I think you’re probably one of the only people I can say for sure still care about her. So if I’m right, then I think you’re gonna want to hear what I have to say.”

Sam’s glare is severe, but that might be her impassive, courtroom facade. Kara wouldn’t dare think she’s able to tell the difference.

“Do you want coffee, or something?”

Kara spends too long debating whether to take her shoes off or not. Sam hasn’t, but her daughter kicked her dirty sneakers into the corner of the foyer, and Kara’s own shoes aren’t the cleanest. 

She’s too tired to care this much. She follows after Sam, shoes on and all.

“No, thank you.” Kara tried mixing caffeine with her pain meds the day before, and the concoction that ensued in her stomach isn’t one she’s eager to relive. “We didn’t have to come here. We could’ve gone somewhere else.”

“I don’t have time for a babysitter and I have ninety-plus hours in self-defense training.” Sam sets about with an espresso maker in her kitchen despite Kara’s answer and gives her a stale look. “Are we going to have any problems that would warrant taking this outside?”

“Uh, no.” She really hopes not. “But, um, I don’t really know how to say this.”

The woman narrows her eyes, but the press of her mouth is warm. “You said you’re friends with Lena.”

“Yes.”

“And you’re a student at NCU?”

“Yeah.”

“What’re you studying?”

“Law.”

Samantha chuckles just as the machine begins spurting out the dark, thick espresso. It looks like engine oil. “Let me guess; 2L?”

“Is it that obvious?” 

“You’re too edgy for anyone with experience yet, too ballsy for a 1L.”

“Is that what you were like?” At Sam’s confused look, Kara elaborates. “When you were a law student.”

Sam narrows her eyes. “You did your research.”

There’s no point in hiding it, not with where this is headed. “I looked up your file.”

“But I don’t suppose my favorite lunch-spot was in there. What’d you do, follow me from the office?”

For someone who’s accusing Kara of stalking, Sam’s relatively calm about it, maybe even amused. Kara can see how her and Lena could’ve gotten along. 

“Your assistant told me.”

Sam snorts. “Really? That’s even worse. God, that makes me miss Lucia.”

Kara steers them back. “So… you also went to NCU.”

“Mhm, that’s how I met Lena.”

The med-school campus is the only one out of all the NCU graduate schools that’s isolated, far on the north end of the city. Half of the med students’ reputation for a snotty superiority complex likely stemmed from the fact that there was little fraternization between them and the other schools.

It’s a challenge. Or a test. The distinction feels important, or maybe Kara is just two hours too late on her meds.

“No it isn’t,” Kara says. _That’s_ a challenge.

One that makes Sam smile. As she turns into her fridge, fishing out a carton of soy milk, Sam’s lips purse like she holds something clever up her sleeve that Kara will never be privy to seeing. It reminds her of Lena.

“No, it isn’t,” Sam agrees. “How’d you meet her, then?”

“Do you know Cat Grant?”

“Ha, who doesn’t.”

“You took her class?”

“No, but some of my friends did, and I worked in the DA’s legal clinic at the same time she was there, once. Just a summer internship.” She pauses and notices how Kara’s watching her hands. “Are you sure you don’t want one?”

“Um, just some water would be nice, actually.” When she comes back with one, Kara nods. “Thanks.”

“Sure. You can sit down if you want. Though—” She glances from Kara’s slinged arm to the high barstools in the kitchen, and then back to Kara’s face, which is surely still a discolored wreck of bruises. “Come on, we can sit in the dining room.”

Kara doesn’t know what she’s supposed to do with her kindness, her gracious hospitality. That guilt, that everlasting, misplaced feeling that she’s still a few feet out of line, is greater than ever.

“Better?” Sam asks once they’re settled in the next room. 

Everything is nicer here. Kara’s best measures of class is Alex and Kelly’s apartment, their modern furniture and modest decorations. In contrast, Sam’s house is _old,_ its wealth even older, but it retains a homey familiarity that gets lost in most newer, more contemporary designs. Even the dining chairs feel like something she could spend a good couple hours lounging in with the right book or case study.

Samantha Arias exudes comfort like it’s second-nature. Kara wonders what Lena would do if she knew she were here, if this is even what she wanted. What she’ll do _when_ she knows.

“Thanks.” Kara sips her water. “I took Cat’s seminar on the penal state and institutions, and… have you heard of the penpal assignment?”

“Oh yeah, she’d just started doing it when I— wait.” She leans forward with an incredulous look. “Don’t tell me that’s how you met her.”

At Kara’s nod, the woman just laughs.

“Have you _actually_ met her?”

Kara nods again.

“Well, damn. I never thought she’d be the type to…” She trails off and scoops back up her tiny cup. She wags her fingers. “Okay, whatever, keep going.”

As gentle as Sam’s presence is, Kara struggles with her nonchalance. She, an entire stranger, just told her that Lena’s life is in danger, and she’s sipping at espresso waving for Kara to continue talking about her courses. 

Like she can read Kara’s thoughts, Sam gives that same disarming smile. “Just start from the beginning.”

“Did you ever meet Lionel Luthor?”

“Lena’s dad?” Sam considers, but shakes her head. “Not properly. I saw him a couple times but… well, her family never took much of a liking to me.” At Kara’s confused look, Sam laughs. “They thought I was a bad influence, because apparently lesbianism is a taught behavior.”

Kara opens her mouth, though to say what, she has no idea. Is Sam implying she herself is a lesbian, or that Lena is? Or they both are? If that’s the case, then does that mean—?

Kara clears her throat, because the questions floating in her head are a sharp turn away from the point. “Right. But you do know what he did for a living?” 

“Yeah, state commissioner for correctional facilities. How could I forget.”

Kara takes a careful breath before she asks, “What do you remember about the Parole Audit Report of 2003?”

Again, Sam pauses to think, but she gives the same shake of her head. “Not much. I remember Lena talking about it when it was going on, but I didn’t really follow it. Lionel was involved, right?”

“Sort of. The state’s Office for Performance Evaluations released an audit report that talked about how to improve parole procedures. The main reason it was so controversial was because it criticized the director of the California Parole Commission, Ben Lockwood, and called out a need for formal complaint procedures for employees.”

“And it incriminated Lionel?”

“Not directly. But both him and the state governor rejected the audit report when it came out, saying it was written by people who didn’t understand the issues that the parole system faced.”

Sam smirks. “Sometimes I think they teach evasion in the job training.”

“They might as well. Essentially what happened is that the report got ignored, and six months later a group of employees were fired after trying to organize a union that protested against the exact treatments the original audit report was trying to call out. They filed a class action against the Department of Corrections, and this is when everybody started to hear more about what was happening, because the ex-employees refused a settlement and wanted a trial by jury. Lionel was named and set to face charges.”

“For rejecting the report?”

“Exactly. Him, Lockwood, and two other state officials. The trial was set for September of 2004.”

A slow understanding begins to dawn over Sam’s features, but she remains silent as Kara goes on.

“In July, all four of the defendants were each offered a plea bargain. The two other officials plead guilty but resigned with their full pensions, whereas Lockwood kept his position on one condition; he agreed to give testimony on another case. It was a smaller case with less publicity, about a county sheriff with sexual allegations against him. The director testified against him and put into evidence multiple private recordings that corroborated his testimony. With his cooperation, the sheriff faced a quick conviction.”

“And what about Lionel? Was he offered a plea deal?”

Kara doesn’t know what makes this part so hard. “He was. But the public never learned what Lionel was offered, because one week after the director’s plea agreement was announced, the Luthors were dead.”

Sam borders on a similar wariness. Kara figures it’s better to lead her through it than force her to her own conclusions.

“I wrote a brief. It details my theory for what exactly Lionel’s plea bargain was, and why I believe it got him killed. Lionel was going to expose a very important group of government officials for a very old crime, and they pinned it on Lena. Every aspect of the murders were set in place to incriminate her, all the way from the circumstances to the defense.”

“Okay, okay,” Sam interrupts, rubbing her forehead. “I’m sorry, don’t take this the wrong way, but… what reason do you have to believe this is all true? It’s a pretty story, don’t get me wrong, but it’s all suggestive. Do you have anything actually concrete?”

Her shoulder throbs again, and it’s all Kara can do to not bite her tongue off in discomfort, but it unexpectedly provides a distracting channel from yet another wave of hot pressure behind her eyes. She looks at Sam with a steadier conviction than she feels. 

“Because my boyfriend took credit for the brief.”

“And?”

“And he was killed, less than twenty-four hours after sharing it.” Kara reaches for water, then stops. Her own words sound distant and hollow. “Is coffee the strongest thing you have?”

When Kara looks back at Sam, the other woman is as impassive as ever with her calculated eyes and her chin in her hands. But there’s something new in her gaze as she regards Kara, and it’s not admiration by any means, or even sympathy, but it’s the simple look of someone letting go of their doubts.

“Yeah,” Sam says at last. She abandons Kara at the table and goes back the way they came. She returns with two short, amber glasses and a blue, rectangular bottle. Without another word, she pours them each a fat dollop of the clear liquor.

The gin hits Kara’s mouth with a delayed bite, cold and soothing over her tongue at first, but sharp by the time it slides down her throat. Maybe it’s for the best that she’s off her meds right now, because Kara tips the glass and welcomes the poison further.

“Did Lena ever tell you how we met?” Sam asks, breaking the tense silence.

Kara refrains from saying that Lena’s technically never so much as mentioned her name, and instead only shakes her head before wiping her mouth.

“I met her when I was sixteen, at the hospital. I was there for something stupid, I think I sprained my ankle. I don’t even remember why they tested me but, lo and behold, I found out I was pregnant. My dad was pissed, Mom was praying, I was just hungry. While they argued with the doctors, I headed for the cafeteria. There was one strawberry pudding cup left, and me and this other girl both reached for it at the same time. She said sorry, and she asked if I wanted it. I’d just started having cravings, so I thought I was going to die if I didn’t have it. I said yes, and that damned girl said too bad and bought it for herself.

“I got a sandwich instead or something. She came and sat at the same table as me. And— everything about that day was a blur, but I’ll never forget what she said to me. I’ll give you the pudding if you can prove you’re more miserable than I am.”

Kara can’t help her own laugh even if it disturbs her aching chest. “That does sound like her.”

“Nice to hear some things haven’t changed.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well, I told her the news. I was pregnant and I had a choice to make. Becoming a lawyer like I’d always dreamed of doing, or I could raise a kid. She laughed at me, that asshole. She just laughed, plastic spoon in her mouth, and she asked why I had to choose. And you know, she was just a kid herself, four years younger than me. We both were kids. I wasn’t expecting her to understand because I didn’t really either, but it was the way she said it. Not like it was something that’d be easy to do or stating the obvious, but… just a genuine question. She wasn’t asking if I’d already thought of it, she was asking why I thought I wouldn’t try.”

Sam shrugs. “Before I met her, I already had my mind made up about what I was going to do. If it wasn’t for her, I would’ve made the worst mistake of my life. That stupid girl and that stupid pudding cup.”

“What was she in the hospital for?”

Sam opens her mouth, but she pauses. “You know, I’m not sure. I don’t think she ever told me.”

Kara looks down as she fiddles with the empty glass in her hands. “Why are you telling me all of this?”

“Because you need to make your point and tell me why you’re here,” Sam says, though not unkindly. “I can tell you don’t trust me, but frankly that is not my problem. I’m telling you this because for all intents and purposes, I owe Lena my life. Whatever it is you need from me, if it’s to help _her_ , then I am all ears.”

Kara can’t help but feel like her next words are the start of a verdict she can’t take back. Sam’s already involved by Kara being here, by knowing Lena at all, but once Kara tells her, involvement doesn’t begin to cover it. It’s too late to pretend none of this ever happened, because Kara put a target on Sam’s back the moment she called her name, but this is still a precipice Kara doesn’t have to take.

If Mike were here, would he still believe she’s doing the right thing?

“I want to prove that Lena’s innocent,” Kara says. “But I don’t know how to do that without getting us both killed.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lena’s a little gay for everyone ig. but also supercorp endgame

**Author's Note:**

> my health insurance plan doesn't include kudos and comments so please help me out 
> 
> hmu on twitter @harrowanthe


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